Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions Books

Book SynopsisFrom rebels to writers, athletes to astronauts, join Kate Fox takes on an entertaining and eye-opening journey through the lives of these extraordinary women whose lives and achievements have too long been hidden. From Cartimandua, the forgotten Iron Age Queen of the North, to Woodbine-smoking football player Lily Parr, Kate with her trademark wit and sense of fun, shows how these astonishing trailblazers laid the ground for modern stars from Victoria Wood to Little Mix. Nicola Adams, Betty Boothroyd and Helen Sharman all have these unsung northern champions to thank for paving their way.Funny, enlightening and a call to arms, it's perfect for a nation ready to rediscover its hidden heroes.Trade Review‘Kate Fox is funny, quirky and a wonderful writer’ Sarah Millican

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Book SynopsisA TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the preeminent historian of 20th century Spain Paul Preston, Architects of Terror is a new history of how paranoia, conspiracy and anti-Semitism was used to justify the military coup of 1936 and enabled the construction of a dictatorship built on violence and persecution.It is the previously untold story of how antisemitic beliefs were weaponised to justify and propagate the Franco overthrow of liberal Spain.The Spanish military coup of 1936 was launched to overturn the social and economic reforms of the democratic Second Republic, and its educational and cultural challenges to the established order. The consequent civil war was fought in the interests of the landowners, industrialists, bankers, clerics and army officers whose privileges were threatened. However, a central justification for a war that took the lives of around 500,000 Spaniards was that it was being fought to combat an alleged scheme for world domination by a non-existent Jewish- Masonic-Bolshevik Conspiracy'. Despite the fact that Spain had only a tiny minority of Jews and Freemasons, Franco and his inner circle were ardent believers in this fabricated conspiracy and spread the notion that the survival of Catholic Spain, as well, of course, of the establishment ' s economic interests, required the total annihilation of Jews and Freemasons.Architects of Terror is the story of how fake news, mendacity, corruption and nostalgia for lost empire generated violence and hatred. The book presents vivid portraits of the key ideologues who propagated the myth of the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik Conspiracy and of the military figures who implemented the atrocities that it justified. Among the convictions shared by these individuals was their belief in the idea that Freemasonry was responsible for Spain ' s loss of empire and in the factual veracity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the notorious fiction about the global domination of the Jews.This is a history that reverberates in our own political momentTrade Review A TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR ‘Deeply researched and revealing . . . Preston’s study is based on both profound knowledge and shrewd human understanding’ Daily Telegraph, five-star review ‘Preston’s great skill lies in carefully dissecting these vile characters…This book reveals Preston at the peak of his powers; he’s an enormous intellect and a great storyteller’ The Times, Gerald DeGroot Praise for A People Betrayed (2020) A Financial Times Best History Book of 2020 ‘For decades, Paul Preston has been one of the English-speaking world’s premier historians of modern Spain. His latest book, dealing with the controversial topic of corruption in Spanish politic, public administration and business, is particularly good on the Franco dictatorship and post-Franco democratic era’ Financial Times ‘Fascinating … The depth of the book’s research cannot be faulted and the examples of grand malfeasance and political corruption are extraordinary … Buried in the narrative lies ample treasure … I applauded Preston’s heroic feat.’ Times ‘Tremendously rich and learned … Preston is one of Britain’s finest historians … This book, massively researched … Powerful, persuasive and utterly fascinating – makes for harrowing reading’ Sunday Times ‘A magisterial study of [Spain’s] turbulent past, seen through the optic of those apparently ineradicable twins: corruption and political incompetence … Races along in a riveting fashion, replete with eye-catching and often blackly humorous anecdotes …Preston’s narrative combines his gift for cogent, summarising clarity and for telling details …Preston has written an admirable book – a lively, comprehensive history of modern Spain.’ Guardian

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Book SynopsisIf you want to discover the captivating history of the French Revolution, this is the book for you . . .Concise, convincing and exciting, this is Christopher Hibbert''s brilliant account of the events that shook eighteenth-century Europe to its foundation. With a mixture of lucid storytelling and fascinating detail, he charts the French Revolution from its beginnings at an impromptu meeting on an indoor tennis court at Versailles in 1789, right through to the ''coup d''etat'' that brought Napoleon to power ten years later.In the process he explains the drama and complexities of this epoch-making era in the compelling and accessible manner he has made his trademark.''A spectacular replay of epic action'' Richard Holmes, The Times''Unquestionably the best popular history of the French Revolution'' The Good Book GuideTable of ContentsPrologue - court and country; the day of the tennis-court oath, 20 June 1789; the day of the Vainquers de la Bastille, 14 July 1789; the day of the market-women, 5-6 October 1789; the days of the federes and the flight to Varennes, 14-17 July 1790 and 19-26 June 1791; the days of the tuileries, 20 June and 10 August 1792; the days of the September massacres and the execution of the king, 2-7 September 1792 and 21 January 1793; the days of the enrages and the hebertists, 28 May-2 June and 4-5 September 1793; the days of the terror, October-December 1793 and March-July 1794; the days of Thermidor, 22-28 July 1794; the days of Germinal, Prairal and Vendemiaire, 1 April, 20 May and 4-6 October 1795; epilogue - the advent of Bonaparte; appendices.

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Book Synopsis “A milestone in Western studies of China.” (John K. Fairbank) In this masterful, highly original approach to modern Chinese history, Jonathan D. Spence shows us the Chinese revolution through the eyes of its most articulate participants—the writers, historians, philosophers, and insurrectionists who shaped and were shaped by the turbulent events of the twentieth century. By skillfully combining literary materials with more conventional sources of political and social history, Spence provides an unparalleled look at China and her people and offers valuable insight into the continuing conflict between the implacable power of the state and the strivings of China's artists, writers, and thinkers.Trade ReviewPraise for The Gate of Heavenly Peace: “Absolutely first rate; it is adventurous in form, scrupulous in content, passionate in its revelation of complex human drama.”—Saturday Review “[Jonathan Spence] has woven a magical symphony that tells us as no conventional history could of the agony of a nation in awesome labor.”—Harrison E. Salisbury, Chicago Tribune Book World “With a novelist’s flair for life and a historian’s grounding in fact . . . there is no other work to match this in sweep, vivacity, and humanity.”—Library Journal Table of ContentsThe Gate of Heavenly Peace - Jonathan D. Spence List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPrefaceNote on Pronunciation1. Arousing the Spirits2. Visions and Violence3. Wanderings4. The Far Horizon5. The Land of Hunger6. Extolling Nirvana7. Whose Children Are Those?8. Wake the Spring9. Farewell to the Beautiful Things10. Refugees11. Rectifications12. A New Order13. The Noise of the RenegadesNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisIn July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the dictatorship of the proletariat. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.Translated and edited with an introduction by Robert ServiceTable of ContentsPart 1 Class society and the state: the state as the product of the irreconcilability of class contradictions; special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.; the state as an instrument for the exploitation of the oppressed class; the "withering away" of the state and violent revolution. Part 2 The state and revolution - the experience of 1848-51: the eve of the revolution; the revolution in summary; the presentation of the question by Marx in 1852. Part 3 The state and revolution - the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 - Marx's analysis: what was heroic about the Communards' attempt?; with what is the smashed state machine to be replaced?; the eradication of the parliamentarianism; organization of the unity of the nation; the destruction of the parasite state. Part 4 Continuation - supplementary clarifications by Engels: the housing question; the polemic with the anarchists; letter to Bebel; critique of the draft of the Erfurt Programme; the 1891 Preface to Marx's "The Civil War in France"; Engels on the overcoming of democracy. Part 5 The economic basis for the withering away of the state: the presentation of the question by Marx; the transition from capitalism to Communisim; the first phase of Communist society; the higher phase of Communist society. Part 6 The vulgarization of Marxism by the opportunists: Plekhanov's polemic with the Anarchists; Kautsky's polemic with the opportunists; Kautsky's polemic with Pannekoek. Part 7 The experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.

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Book SynopsisA gripping narrative of the most critical years in modern Ireland''s history - from Charles Townshend, author of Easter 1916TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014The protracted, terrible fight for independence pitted the Irish against the British and the Irish against other Irish. It was both a physical battle of shocking violence against a regime increasingly seen as alien and unacceptable and an intellectual battle for a new sort of country. The damage done, the betrayals and grim compromises put the new nation into a state of trauma for at least a generation, but at a nearly unacceptable cost the struggle ended: a new republic was born.Charles Townshend''s Easter 1916 opened up the astonishing events around the Rising for a new generation and in The Republic he deals, with the same unflinchingly wish to get to the truth behind the legend, with the most critical years in Ireland''s history. There has been a great temptation to view these years through the prisms of martyrology and good-and-evil. The picture painted by Townshend is far more nuanced and sceptical - but also never loses sight of the ordinary forms of heroism performed by Irish men and women trapped in extraordinary times.''The author has devoted his life to the study of Irish history and this huge work is the pinnacle of his labours'' John Banville on Easter 1916Trade ReviewElectric ... [a] magisterial and essential book -- Roy Foster * Irish Times *[A] tour de force ... wonderful ... brilliantly written history ... Townshend's book can only inspire admiration -- John Lee * Irish Mail on Sunday *Highly detailed and rich ... [a] magisterial and judicious narrative ... this must surely be one of the definitive texts on this period of Anglo-Irish history -- Mary Kenny * Literary Review *Charles Townshend's monumental work [is] bold in ambition, scope and execution ... a work of broad and confident understanding, characterised by a uniform care in its approach to complex and controversial material ... An intensely compelling and often discomfiting narrative, which candidly explores four years of personal and intimate violence * Tablet *Magisterial ... intensely gruelling but hugely impressive ... for people who prefer to know the facts ... [a] fine achievement of breathing new life into a subject that some historians might assume had already been done to death * Sunday Business Post *For those interested in a reliable and empathetic introduction to the topic, this is now the best place to start * BBC History Magazine *A great read ... it has certainly set a very high standard for others to measure up to -- Marianne Elliott * Times Higher Education *A well-sourced, severely objective account of the origins and courses of the wars that followed the Easter Rising * Irish Catholic *Charles Townshend's The Republic . . . nails the Irish revolutionary events of 1918-23 with his inimitable kind of forensic panache -- Roy Foster * Times Literary Supplement BOOKS OF THE YEAR *

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Book SynopsisThe collapse of France in 1870 had an overwhelming impact - on Paris, on France and on the rest of the world. People everywhere saw Paris as the centre of Europe and the hub of culture, fashion and invention. This book tells the story of the great crises of the rivalry between France and GermanyTrade Review"This classic work . . . is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the civil war that still stirs the soul of France." -Evening Standard, London

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Book SynopsisA daring critique of communism and how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain, Camus' essay examines the revolutions in France and Russia, and argues that since they were both guilty of producing tyranny and corruption, hope for the future lies only in revolt without revolution. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

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Book SynopsisShah of Shahs depicts the final years of the Shah in Iran, and is a compelling meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. Here, Kapuscinski describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his cruel oppression of the Iranian people, sees himself as the father of a nation, who can turn a backward country into a great power - a vain hope that proves a complete failure. Yet even as Iran becomes a ''behemoth of riches'' and as the Shah lives like a European billionaire, its people live in a climate of fear, terrorized by the secret police. Told with intense power and feeling, Kapuscinski portrays the inevitable build-up to revolution - a cataclysmic upheaval that delivered Iran into the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini.

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE RUNCIMAN AWARD 2022A NEW STATESMAN AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021''Deserves to remain the standard treatment of the subject in English for many decades to come'' Roderick Beaton, Times Literary SupplementIn the exhausted, repressive years that followed Napoleon''s defeat in 1815, there was one cause that came to galvanize countless individuals across Europe and the United States: freedom for Greece.Mark Mazower''s wonderful new book recreates one of the most compelling, unlikely and significant events in the story of modern Europe. In the face of near impossible odds, the people of the villages, valleys and islands of Greece rose up against Sultan Mahmud II and took on the might of the imperial Ottoman armed forces, its Turkish cavalrymen, Albanian foot soldiers and the fearsome Egyptians. Despite the most terrible disasters, they helTrade ReviewThe Greek Revolution offers the best and fullest explanation, to date, for a series of events whose effects would change the entire geopolitics of Europe. Written with compassion and understanding for the human cost of that achievement, it deserves to remain the standard treatment of the subject in English for many decades to come. -- Roderick Beaton * Times Literary Supplement *Exquisite detail, altogether impressive ... a cornucopia of revolution. -- Gerard DeGroot * The Times *Compelling and disturbing, enriched by many new sources and excellent colour illustrations, and paying attention to the role of Ottomans and Albanians as well as Greeks, Mazower's book will become the standard account of this crucial revolution. -- Philip Mansel * The Spectator *An engaging combination of fast-flowing narrative and insightful analysis. -- Tony Barber * Financial Times *Encyclopaedic ... superbly subtle and thorough. -- Julian Evans * Daily Telegraph *With vivid detail, impeccable scholarship and great nuance, Mazower shows how the modern idea of the nation emerges out of the complex, sometimes random and often messy interactions between a plurality of agents ... An illuminating account of both the unifying power of myths about the past, and the dangers inherent when such myths are connected to political reality. -- Lea Ypi * New Statesman *As the subtitle of Mark Mazower's new book maintains, events in Greece 200 years ago helped shape modern Europe. His elegant and rigorous account also holds lessons for modern geopolitics: about the galvanising effects of violence, the role of foreign intervention and the design flaws in dreams. * The Economist *An epic narrative, both scholarly, breathlessly page-turning and packed with hauntingly romantic characters. Few historians dig so deep or with such sympathy into what history felt like to those living through it ... anyone in search of an opera plot should scour these drama-packed pages. -- Noonie Minogue * The Tablet *Broad in scope and colorful in detail, this is a masterful portrait of a historic watershed. ... [A] sweeping history of Greece's 1821 war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. [Mazower] recounts the revolution's inception among Greek emigrés with an idealistic dream of Hellenic nationalism and its actuality as a murky, eight-year struggle fought mainly by peasants and warlords who were motivated less by patriotism than by religious hatred of Muslims, factional vendettas, and mercenary self-interest ... A lucid, elegantly written, and often gripping account. * Publishers Weekly *On the bicentennial of the Greek revolution, a prominent scholar tracks the historical detail and enormous international significance of the improbable, largely grassroots uprising against the Ottoman Empire. Mazower, a Columbia professor and winner of the Wolfson Prize for History who has written extensively about Greece and the Balkans, ably ties together the many disparate threads of this complex history of Greek independence. ... An elucidating history that is relevant to understanding the geopolitics of Greece today. * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book Synopsis*WINNER OF THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2023**A NEW YORKER BOOK OF THE YEAR*''The best book about the subject I have ever read'' Max Hastings, Sunday TimesA sweeping history of occupation and resistance in war-torn Europe, from the acclaimed author of The Eagle UnbowedAcross the whole of Nazi-ruled Europe the experience of occupation was sharply varied. Some countries - such as Denmark - were within tight limits allowed to run themselves. Others - such as France - were constrained not only by military occupation but by open collaboration. In a historical moment when Nazi victory seemed permanent and irreversible, the question ''why resist?'' was therefore augmented by ''who was the enemy?''.Resistance is an extraordinarily powerful, humane and haunting account of how and why all across Nazi-occupied Europe some people decided to resist the Third Reich. This could range from open partisan warfare in theTrade ReviewThe best book about the resistance I have ever read. It addresses the story with scholarly objectivity and an absolute lack of sentimentality ... it is marvellous to read a study of such breadth and depth, which reaches balanced judgments. -- Max Hastings * Sunday Times *Ground-breaking ... a superb, myth-busting survey of the many ways in which the subjugated peoples of Europe tried to fight back. -- Saul David * Daily Telegraph *A full and nuanced account of all the different forms of resistance... a timely book. * Times Literary Supplement *Eminently readable ... subtle, multilayered and kaleidoscopic ... Kochanski's gripping account of the activities of the resistance includes, as might be expected, tales of derring-do and extraordinary courage as well as tragedy, betrayal and Nazi barbarism. -- Andrew Stuttaford * Wall Street Journal *This ambitious history offers the first unified picture of resistance against Nazi Germany in the many countries it invaded ... Dispensing with heroics and highlighting the imperfect, human nature of the underground, [Kochanski] nevertheless depicts a vital defence of dignity, spirit, and the future, mounted against all odds. * New Yorker *Halik Kochanski's Resistance reads less like a work of history and more like a chronicle of a partisan war foretold ... her scrupulous scholarship, and her refusal to romanticize the grim, grimy work of being a resister, does make Resistance something of a primer for the many Ukrainians now fighting to undermine Russian authority. -- Yuliya Tymoshenko * Project Syndicate *This history of resistance in the Second World War is as moving as it is comprehensive. * The Critic *An excellent comparative study of wartime resistance in all its forms. * BBC History *

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Book Synopsis ''The superb, funny, fascinating story of Lenin''s trans-European rail journey and how it shook the world'' Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Books of the Year''Splendid ... a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it with wit, judgment and an eye for telling detail'' David Aaronovitch, The TimesBy 1917 the European war seemed to be endless. Both sides in the fighting looked to new weapons, tactics and ideas to break a stalemate that was itself destroying Europe. In the German government a small group of men had a brilliant idea: why not sow further confusion in an increasingly chaotic Russia by arranging for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the most notorious of revolutionary extremists, currently safely bottled up in neutral Switzerland, to go home?Catherine Merridale''s Lenin on the Train recreates Lenin''s extraordinary journey from harmless exile in Zurich, across a Germany falling to pieces from the war''s deprivations, and northwards to the edge of Lapland to his eventual ecstatic reception by the revolutionary crowds at Petrograd''s Finland Station.With great skill and insight Merridale weaves the story of the train and its uniquely strange group of passengers with a gripping account of the now half-forgotten liberal Russian revolution and shows how these events intersected. She brilliantly uses a huge range of contemporary eyewitnesses, observing Lenin as he travelled back to a country he had not seen for many years. Many thought he was a mere ''useful idiot'', others thought he would rapidly be imprisoned or killed, others that Lenin had in practice few followers and even less influence. They would all prove to be quite wrong.Trade ReviewTwice I missed my stop on the Tube reading this book... this is a jewel among histories, taking a single episode from the penultimate year of the Great War, illuminating a continent, a revolution and a series of psychologies in a moment of cataclysm and doing it with wit, judgment and an eye for telling detail... Catherine Merridale, who won the Wolfson history prize for Red Fortress, her 2013 book about the Kremlin, is one of those historians whose work allows you to understand something more about the world we inhabit now. -- David Aaronovitch * The Times *'A detailed look at the famous train journey... fascinatingly realist... [Merridale] is good at capturing the frankly dodgy atmosphere of high politics and low motives that swirled around post-abdication Russia... Merridale can bring humour into the most gruesome moments. -- André Van Loon * Spectator *Catherine Merridale is one of the foremost foreign historians of Russia, combining wry insights with deep sympathy for the human beings suffering the tragedies she writes about... It combines diplomatic intrigue, spycraft, towering personalities, bureaucratic bungling, military history and ideology. Ms Merridale neatly unites background and foreground, and deftly evokes the atmosphere of the time... excellent * Economist *Praise for RED FORTRESS: 'Magnificent ... [a] a superbly written book' Telegraph 'A zingy, razor-keen history of the Kremlin' Spectator Books of the Year 'Exhilarating' * Guardian *A brisk and often witty overview for the lay reader of the circumstances leading up to the February and October revolutions. -- Helen Rappaport * The Sunday Times *With a novelists' readability and a fertile imagination... Merridale retraces his week-long journey... At the same time, she skilfully weaves into the story the unfolding revolution * Observer Review *With the 100th anniversary of the two Russian revolutions of 1917 around the corner... surely no author will give a better account than Merridale of how, in that fateful year, Lenin made his way with German help from exile in Switzerland to Russia. * Financial Times BOOKS OF THE YEAR *Fills a lacuna in the canonical record of Soviet communism.... A superbly written narrative history that draws together and makes sense of scattered data, anecdotes, and minor episodes, affording us a bigger picture of events that we now understand to be transformative * Kirkus Reviews *Merridale corrects factual errors made by predecessors and opens a fresh interpretive perspective. Personal reenactment of Lenin's eight-day train-and-ferry journey gives force to materials uncovered through assiduous research in newly opened archives as Merridale resolves perplexities long surrounding the political gambles, devious espionage, and shadowy financing that transport Lenin through Germany on a sealed train bound for a land tempestuously shedding its czarist past and desperate for a leader to guide it into an uncharted future. . . . History recovered as living drama * Booklist *A colorful, suspenseful, and well-documented narrative * Publishers Weekly *[This] remarkable account recaptures the idealism that filled this ragtag band of revolutionaries with the desperate belief that their leader would bring a "springtime of hope" to their divided and brutalised country. This is a revealing portrait of Lenin and his fellow travellers at a crucial turning point in world history. -- PD Smith * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisBefore Easter 1916 Dublin had been a city much like any other British city, comparable to Bristol or Liverpool and part of a complex, deep-rooted British world. The devastating events of that Easter changed everything. This book focuses on these events.

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ARMY MILITARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2020 ''A superb, unique, and unforgettable story of war and death, fear and cruelty, above all the horrors and allure of combat'' Simon Sebag Montefiore''One of the most profound books I have ever read about the real nature of war and the abstract allure of the ideas and the bloodshed that fuels it'' Jon Lee Anderson, author of The Fall of BaghdadAn astonishing account of the nature of war from acclaimed novelist and decorated former US marine Elliot AckermanIn a refugee camp in southern Turkey, Elliot Ackerman sits across the table from Abu Hassar, who fought for Al Qaeda in Iraq and has murky connections to the Islamic State. At first, Ackerman pretends to have been a journalist during the Iraq War, but after he establishes a rapport with Abu Hassar, he reveals that in fact he was a Marine. The two men then compare their fighting experiences in the MiTrade ReviewElliot Ackerman's exceptional memoir is really a double memoir of his own experiences as a Marine and those of a Jihadist fighter he befriends in a refugee camp. The result is a superb, unique and unforgettable story of war and death, fear and cruelty, above all the horrors and allure of combat.Elliot Ackerman's voice scares me. It's a bit too close for comfort. He sees too much and he knows too much, and that makes him a great guide to today's post-everything Middle East. Read him at your own risk - but ignore this book at your own peril. -- Thomas E. Ricks, author of ‘Making the Corps,’ ‘Fiasco,’ and ‘Churchill and Orwell'Rare is the writer who can illuminate either the experience of the individual or the larger context of the times in which we live. Elliot Ackerman manages to do both. He is as adept at describing the strange cocktail of emotions that accompany the moments preceding combat as he is unraveling the Gordian Knot of contemporary geopolitics. That he does so in the graceful, lucid prose fans of his fiction have come to admire is even more remarkable. Places and Names is an extraordinarily beautiful and insightful work of memoir and journalism by a writer who deserves to be read widely. -- Kevin PowersHow often does one encounter a novel as perfectly shaped, as fresh, as subtle and as explosive as this? I couldn't turn away from Elliot Ackerman's latest taut wonder, and when I got to the final page, I wanted to start all over again, in the light of the haunting last words. Patiently, and unflinchingly, Ackerman is becoming one of the great poet laureates of America's tragic adventurism across the globe. -- Pico IyerWhen I finished Elliot Ackerman's Places and Names my copy was covered with bracketed paragraphs and underlined phrases. There is no surer indicator of a book filled with insight and good writing. Ackerman's honest searching to come to terms with his war experience helped me better understand my own. This book is a gift that should be shared with every American who helped pay for people like Ackerman to fight their wars for them. -- Karl Marlantes, prize-winning author of Matterhorn and Deep RiverPlaces and Names is its own profile in courage: the story of how a Marine turned reporter struggled with the polemics of desolation in the Middle East. Elliot Ackerman is a man of both action and thought, and his book is closely observed, rigorously lived, and clarifying for all of us who have not understood how U.S. policy in the Islamic world went so terribly wrong. -- Andrew Solomon, author of 'Far and Away', 'Far From the Tree', and 'The Noonday Demon'In Places and Names, Elliot Ackerman, a soldier turned writer, seeks out his former foes and confronts his own memories on battlefields where the killing continues. The result is one of the most profound books I have ever read about the real nature of war and the abstract allure of the ideas and the bloodshed that fuels it. -- Jon Lee AndersonPlaces and Names is a brilliant and gripping account of the aftermath of failed wars and revolutions, and of the still burning idealism that smolders in the wreckage. Elliot Ackerman brings a novelist's skill with language, a reporter's eye for detail, and his life experience as a highly decorated Marine veteran of five deployments to bear in this unique and powerful meditation on violence, heroism, and the fracturing of the Middle East." -- Phil Klay, National Book Award winning author of ‘Redeployment’What a great, honest book-the kind that makes one feel lucky to have in one's hands. Ackerman has served his country twice: first as an infantryman in our nations wars, and then as a guide-wise beyond his years-who helps us understand what we've done. His prose is easy and comfortable like an old jacket. His understanding of war is so profound that one feels like secrets have been revealed-truths-information that one day may be necessary for our survival. Well done. -- Sebastian Junger, author of TribeElliot Ackerman fought the Long War, and now, with Places and Names, he gives us a searingly honest record of his ongoing effort to make sense of the war. This is, literally, a book of wanderings; Ackerman's sojourns to conflict zones, old battlefields, and muddy refugee camps recall the wanderings of that earlier soldier, Odysseus, as he struggles to come home from war, and, no less than his predecessor, Ackerman finds himself journeying through the shadow world of ghosts and spirits that go by the name of memory. Vivid, profound, restless, and relentlessly probing, Places and Names is destined to become a classic of the Long War. -- Ben Fountain, author of 'Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk'Ackerman brings a fiction writer's touch to his reportage. The soldier-scribe is a familiar figure in British narratives of the region, from TE Lawrence to Rory Stewart. Ackerman fits easily into this tradition ... The book shows what it is like to be in the middle of it all - particularly for a young, open-minded and quietly idealistic American. -- Patrick Bishop * The Telegraph *It is a rare writer who is not afraid to deal with the toughest conflicts, ask the hardest questions, show the darkest side of even heroes, and still manage to renew our faith in humanity.Elliot Ackerman was a young Marine Corps officer during the battle of Fallujah in 2004. I was an embedded journalist with his unit, which lost 20 men in the first week of fighting. I remember him as clever, direct and sometimes playfully ironic, all qualities on display in his book about what he has seen of war, Places and Names. His account of how he won a Silver Star is gripping, the chaotic reality on the ground contrasting with the po-faced and supremely uninformative official citation. His descriptions of Syria, which he visited as a writer, were so painfully evocative for me that I had to stop reading for a time. His vivid, sparse prose bears comparison to that of Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried or Norman Lewis in Naples '44; Places and Names has the same clear-eyed view of what war is. -- Paul Wood * The Spectator *Beautiful writing about combat and humanity and what it means to 'win' a war. -- Mary Louise Kelly * NPR, All Things Considered *Green on Blue is harrowing, brutal, and utterly absorbing. With spare prose, Ackerman has spun a morally complex tale of revenge, loyalty, and brotherly love ... a disturbing glimpse into one of the world's most troubled regions.This novel as a whole attests to Mr. Ackerman's breadth of understanding - an understanding not just of the seasonal rhythms of war in Afghanistan and the harsh, unforgiving beauty of that land, not just of the hardships of being a soldier there, but a bone-deep understanding of the toll that a seemingly endless war has taken on ordinary Afghans who have known no other reality for decades.Elliot Ackerman has done something brave as a writer and even braver as a soldier: He has touched, for real, the culture and soul of his enemy

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Book SynopsisA fresh and acclaimed account of the Spanish Civil War by the bestselling author of Stalingrad and The Battle of Arnhem To mark the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War''s outbreak, Antony Beevor has written a completely updated and revised account of one of the most bitter and hard-fought wars of the twentieth century. With new material gleaned from the Russian archives and numerous other sources, this brisk and accessible book (Spain''s #1 bestseller for twelve weeks), provides a balanced and penetrating perspective, explaining the tensions that led to this terrible overture to World War II and affording new insights into the war-its causes, course, and consequences.

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Book SynopsisAn astonishing retelling of twentieth-century history from the Ottoman perspective, delivering profound new insights into World War I and the contemporary Middle EastBetween 1911 and 1922, a series of wars would engulf the Ottoman Empire and its successor states, in which the central conflict, of course, is World War I—a story we think we know well. As Sean McMeekin shows us in this revelatory new history of what he calls the “wars of the Ottoman succession,” we know far less than we think. The Ottoman Endgame brings to light the entire strategic narrative that led to an unstable new order in postwar Middle East—much of which is still felt today.The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East draws from McMeekin’s years of groundbreaking research in newly opened Ottoman and Russian archives. With great storytelling flair, McMeekin makes new the epic stories we know from the Ottoman front, from Gallipoli to the exploits of Lawrence in Arabia, and introduces a vast range of new stories to Western readers. His accounts of the lead-up to World War I and the Ottoman Empire’s central role in the war itself offers an entirely new and deeper vision of the conflict. Harnessing not only Ottoman and Russian but also British, German, French, American, and Austro-Hungarian sources, the result is a truly pioneering work of scholarship that gives full justice to a multitiered war involving many belligerents. McMeekin also brilliantly reconceives our inherited Anglo-French understanding of the war’s outcome and the collapse of the empire that followed. The book chronicles the emergence of modern Turkey and the carve-up of the rest of the Ottoman Empire as it has never been told before, offering a new perspective on such issues as the ethno-religious bloodletting and forced population transfers which attended the breakup of empire, the Balfour Declaration, the toppling of the caliphate, and the partition of Iraq and Syria—bringing the contemporary consequences into clear focus.Every so often, a work of history completely reshapes our understanding of a subject of enormous historical and contemporary importance. The Ottoman Endgame is such a book, an instantly definitive and thrilling example of narrative history as high art.

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Book SynopsisExplores the history of China from the founding of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) to the present day. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this rising superpower in what promises to be the 'Chinese century'.Trade ReviewThe Oxford History of Modern China brings together top experts to tell a compelling story of China in its past four centuries. Integrating narrative with analysis in a perfect balance, this great asset for classroom instruction also reminds the instructor what brought her into the history profession in the first place. Truly amazing! * Mara Yue Du, Cornell University *The Oxford History of Modern China brings together top experts to tell a compelling story of China in its past four centuries. Integrating narrative with analysis in a perfect balance, this great asset for classroom instruction also reminds the instructor of what brought her into the history profession in the first place. Truly amazing! * Mara Yue Du, Cornell University *Review from previous edition [This] set of essays by a collection of the world's leading China scholars makes compelling reading for the China novice and seasoned China-hand alike. It is a wonderful guide to understanding the sweeping changes and dramatic transformations that have shaped China from the dynastic era to the present day. * Elizabeth Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations *An excellent introduction to the history of modern China for the general reader and student alike ... I am sure it will prove popular with students and the general public alike. * Tim Chamberlain, LSE Review of Books *The best place to start for those who wish to get a handle on modern China. * Asian Review of Books *Table of ContentsList of Maps A Guide to Pronouncing Romanized Chinese Introduction by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom 1: From Late Ming to High Qing, 1550-1792 by Anne Gerritsen 2: New Domestic and Global Challenges, 1792-1860 by Stephen R. Platt 3: Restoration and Reform, 1860-1900 by Robert Bickers 4: Felling a Dynasty, Founding a Republic by Peter Zarrow 5: The Rise of Nationalism and Revolutionary Parties, 1919-1937 by James Carter 6: The War Years, 1937-1949 by Rana Mitter 7: The Early Years of the People's Republic, 1950-1964 by S. A. Smith 8: The Cultural Revolution Era, 1964-1976 by Richard Curt Kraus 9: Reform and Rebuilding, 1976-1988 by Timothy Cheek 10: Tiananmen and Its Aftermath, 1989-1999 by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Kate Merkel-Hess 11: China Rising, 2000-2010 by William A. Callahan 12: The People's Leader: The Xi Jinping Era of Chinese Politics by Diana Fu and Emile Dirks 13: The Presence of the Past--A Coda by Ian Johnson Timeline Further Reading Index

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Book SynopsisBerkeley, California stood at the center of the political, social, and cultural upheaval that made the 1960s a unique period in American history. In Berkeley at War, W.J. Rorabaugh, who attended the graduate school of the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s, presents a lively, informative account of the events that changed forever what had once been a quiet, conservative white suburb. Rorabaugh''s meticulously researched, authoritative narrative covers the entire period, from the rise of the Free Speech Movement to the growth and increasing militance of a black community struggling to end segregation; from the emergence of radicalism and the anti-war movement to the blossoming hippie culture; and from the explosive conflict over People''s Park to the beginnings of modern-day feminism and environmentalism. An invaluable account of its time and place, Berkeley at War anchors the sixties in American history, both before and since that colorful decade.Trade ReviewAccessible and stiulating. * Perry Blatz, Duquesne University *Thorough and engaging popular history. * New York Newsday *A skillful researcher who also possesses a vigorous narrative style, Rorabaugh brings scholarly clarity to the turmoil of the mid- to late-1960's. * Publisher's Weekly *Evocative and smoothly written....A compelling story of politics and power, silliness and cynicism, ideology and idiosyncrasies....Rorabaugh catches the temper of the times....He leads deftly from boardroom to classroom, coffeehouse to crash pad, in a perceptive and evenhanded Baedeker to a turbulent era. * Kirkus Reviews *[Rorabaugh's] meticulous account brings back those years, while showing how little most of us really knew about the forces setthing around us then....The book conveys many vivid images of a unique city as well as provides an authoritative account of an era. The significance of Berkeley at War lies in the fact that Berkeley was a quintessential American city of the 1960s * and those times still shape our world today.The Seattle Times *Rorabaugh narrates the events and identifies the issues that swirled into headlines and newscasts as the disenfranchised sought to get their messages and their cases before the general public. The success and outcome of that power struggle are authoritatively assessed in this detailed chronicle of a watershed moment in American society's development. * Booklist *A welcome addition to literature about the sixties....Can help readers better understand both Berkeley in the 1960s and our contemporary historical circumstances as well. It is a book about the past, but also one very much about the present. With it...we will be able to place our own lives in context, in proper perspective. * The Stanford Daily *A sober and absorbing chronicle of the transformation of a university town into a political battlefield. * Indochina Chronology *Excellent....A unique, well-balanced, and solidly researched study. * Perspective *Excellent....A unique, well-balanced, and solidly researched study that will be of interest to scholars and laypersons interested in the turbulent decade that now lies twenty years in the past but that still strongly reverberates in the consciousness of all who lived through it. * Perspective *[A] stimulating history of the tumult at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s. * The Washington Post *In prose that is clear and frequently elegant, Rorabaugh has succeeded in providing a coherent overview of both the place and the decade, not an easy challenge. * California Monthly *[The] sources utilized here are voluminous and minded extremely well....Comprehensive, if not always forceful, narrative. * Barbara L. Tischler, Queens College, CUNY *

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Book SynopsisElegantly written and meticulously researched, this book offers a major new interpretation of the Ku Klux Klan in America, placing the organization in its context of class and gender as well as race and religion.Trade Reviewa study that demonstrates how race relations are intertwined with other kinds of hierarchical relations. * The Historian *a remarkable, readable, and important book on the second Ku Klux Klan. From a database of 418 Klan memebers she extracted statistical and individual profiles. She skilfully weaves national,state, and local Athens activities together with individual stories and profiles of the membership to create a mosaic of the Klan. With this study, Nancy Maclean has made a significant scholarly contribution to our understanding of the Klan. * The Historian *

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Book SynopsisAt the century''s end, societies all over the world are throwing off the yoke of authoritarian rule and beginning to build democracies. At any such time of radical change, the question arises: should a society punish its ancien regime or let bygones be bygones? Transitional Justice takes this question to a new level with an interdisciplinary approach that challenges the very terms of the contemporary debate. Ruti Teitel explores the recurring dilemma of how regimes should respond to evil rule, arguing against the prevailing view favoring punishment, yet contending that the law nevertheless plays a profound role in periods of radical change. Pursuing a comparative and historical approach, she presents a compelling analysis of constitutional, legislative, and administrative responses to injustice following political upheaval. She proposes a new normative conception of justice--one that is highly politicized--offering glimmerings of the rule of law that, in her view, have become symbols oTrade ReviewPerhaps the most useful chapter in the book is the one examining reparatory justice. Teitel handles well the duality of reparations * The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 95, 2001 *"A valuable contribution to the growing body of scholarly literature."--Aryeh Neier, New York Review of Books"Impressive....Teitel goes through the complex issues raised during transitional periods in an ambitious attempt to construct the language of a new jurisprudence. What is novel about Teitel's approach is the attempt to provide an overarching approach to understanding issues that arise in and out of transitional justice....[The book] is filled with fresh ideas and interesting, provoking perspectives....Essential reading for all those facing the complexities of transition in practice."--Times Higher Education SupplementTable of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. The Rule of Law ; 2. Criminal Justice ; 3. Historical Justice ; 4. Reparatory Justice ; 5. Administrative Justice ; 6. Constitutional Justice ; 7. Towards a Theory of Transitional Justice

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Book SynopsisRevolutionary Russia: A History in Documents provides a visually stimulating survey of revolutionary Russia, from the collapse of the autocracy in 1917 to the consolidation of the Stalinist system in the 1930s. Authors Robert Weinberg and Laurie Bernstein have collected far-flung documents--many available in English for the first time--and woven them into a narrative that focuses on the effort to build communism in Russia and its effects on the lives of ordinary people. Providing introductions to each chapter and document along with sidebars and detailed photo captions, the main text tantalizes readers with the great vision, conflict, hopes, and horrors of this much-mythologized part of modern history, while the back matter offers resources for further exploration. Utilizing a mix of textual and visual documents-including photographs, posters, and objects-to create a textured history of revolutionary Russia, the book covers such diverse topics as the prelude to revolution, the BolsheviTable of ContentsWhat is a Document? ; How to Read a Document ; Introduction ; 1. PRELUDE TO REVOLUTION ; A Land of Contrasts ; Revolutionary Politics ; The Revolution of 1905 ; The Eve of War and Revolution ; 2. 1917: THE YEAR OF REVOLUTION ; Society Becomes Radical ; The Bolshevik Rise to Power ; Views of the Revolution ; 3. THE CONSOLIDATION OF BOLSHEVIK RULE, 1918-1921 ; The Fate of the Royal Family ; Opposition and Criticism ; The Embrace of Dictatorship ; Peasant Resistance and the Crisis of Kronstadt ; 4. THE ROAD TO SOCIALISM ; The Transformation of Culture and Society ; Celebrating Revolution ; The Debate about NEP ; 5. STALIN'S REVOLUTION FROM ABOVE, 1928-1932 ; Beating Russia into the Twentieth Century ; The War against the Peasantry and Church ; The World of Five-Year Plans ; 6. PICTURE ESSAY: WOMEN'S LIBERATION IN THE SOVIET UNION ; 7. SOVIET SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN THE 1930s ; The Cult of Stalin ; The Revolution of Stalin ; 8. THE GREAT TERROR ; The Gulag ; Three Views of the Purges ; The Trial of Bukharin ; The Purges in Literature ; Epilogue ; Assessments of Stalin's Work ; Reflection on the Soviet Experience ; Timeline ; Further Reading ; Websites ; Text Credits ; Picture Credits ; Index ; Index

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Book SynopsisThe Four Horsemen narrates the history of revolution in Spain, Naples, Greece, and Russia in the 1820s, connecting the social movements and activities on the ground, in the inimitable voice of a renowned historian.Trade ReviewBeautifully written, dramatic, and filled with life, The Four Horsemen is a tribute to the peoples and ideas that it champions....The Four Horsemen provides an original narrative of four particular upheavals that presaged the transition of governments from monarchies to constitutional regimes and nations-states....The Four Horsemen is transnational history at its finest. * Lucien J. Frary, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook *Based on primary sources from all four countries, this deeply researched narrative blossoms into a true transnational history, illustrating the interconnection of these revolts....A tour de force that deftly tells an important story in engrossing detail. * CHOICE *Published posthumously, Stites's final work is both a career-defining accomplishment and something of a departure. The preeminent European historian broadens his focus from Russia and popular culture to encompass the entire continent and the spread of democracy, revolution, and self-determination. * Publishers Weekly *The Four Horsemen is a highly original and important study of revolutionary movements in early nineteenth century Europe. With a strong cast of extraordinary characters, it is also a tremendous read. * Tim Blanning, University of Cambridge *This is a beautiful book, covering a period that is chronically understudied, and doing so with great richness and subtlety, in a way that no one to my knowledge has ever done. Stites was a historian primarily of Russia, and yet his knowledge of developments across Europe was impressive. In his deft handling, a line of continuity running from Spain to Italy to Greece to Russia is exposed with incredible clarity, revealing the close connections between the disparate liberal revolutions of the 1820s, and their broader resonance throughout Europe. Stites wrote like the historian of my mind's eye: learned, wise, kindly, and humane, sensitive to life's great openings as well as to its tragic closures. * Darrin M. McMahon, Florida State University *Richard Stites's astute and engagingly written book helps to recover the importance of these men [four remarkable, if unlikely, rebels] and their lost causes, both for their time as well as ours. They formed a subterranean liberal international, creating far-flung networks to resist tyranny. They believed that toppling a despot in a single country would reverberate across Europe. For them, the fate of Spain was entwined with the fate of Russia. It was not accidental that many refugees from failed revolutions in Spain, Naples, and Russia later converged on Greece and died there in the cause of independence. Together they forged a primordial European identity that survived their own anclimactic ends in exile, in dungeons, or on the scaffold. * Gabriel Paquette, Times Literary Supplement *Single-handedly, this study revisits one of the most neglected episodes of European history: namely the failed liberal and constitutional revolutions of the 1820s. With the enviable nimbleness of someone who has mastered the art of story-telling, and no fewer than a dozen European languages, Stites interweaves seamlessly the story of three very different Southern European Revolutions (together with the Decembrist Revolt) into a highly original and exquisitely written study...Each chapter is written in a gripping and page-turning fashion, with oddly apposite moments of dry humour, which will undoubtedly make this book both a classic and an essential item on any undergraduate reading list exploring the age of revolutions...Hopefully more scholars will follow the path opened by Stites's accessible and elegantly written study. The four horsemen remain vanquished but, thanks to this book, they will not be forgotten. * Ambrogio A. Caiani, English Historical Review *Table of ContentsEditors' Preface Preface I. Before the Barricades Went Up II. Rafael Del Riego: The Ride through Andalusia III. Guglielmo Pepe: Marching into Naples IV. Alexandros Yspilanti: Across the River Pruth V. Sergei Muraviev-Apostol: Into the Steppe VI. The Torn Cloth of Memory Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA broad-ranging history of defectors from the Communist world to the West and how their Cold War treatment shaped present-day restrictions on cross-border movement.Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world''s attention during the Cold War. Their stories were given sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. In contrast to other migrants, defectors were pursued by the states they left even as they were eagerly sought by the United States and its allies. Taking part in a risky game that played out across the globe, defectors sought to transcend the limitations of the Cold War world.Defectors follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air gave shape to a globalized world. It charts a global struggle over defectors that unfolded among rival intelligence agencies operating in the shadows Trade ReviewA nuanced look at deep complications underneath stories of asylum seekers in their journey 'from tyranny to liberty'. * Kirkus *Erik R. Scott's Defectors is a groundbreaking work of Cold War history and a real page-turner. Scott combines excellent storytelling with powerful arguments about migration, sovereignty, borders, and international law. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in Soviet-American relations and their impact on the wider world. * Francine Hirsch, author of Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II *This timely and deeply researched book shows how the historical conception and implementation of 'walls' can help to situate current debates about globalization and population flows. It is a major contribution to our understanding of the human and political dimensions of the first Cold War, showing how the superpowers colluded as well as competed in their efforts to define their borders. * Diane P. Koenker, University College London *Erik Scott deftly incorporates the motives, trajectories, and experiences of Soviet defectors into a subtle analysis of the efforts made by the major state protagonists during the Cold War to manage international migration in the post-World War II era. His carefully researched, illuminating, and intriguing book deserves to be widely read by students of international history. * Peter Gatrell, author of The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent *Zooming in to the case of the Soviet Union, Scott broadens our perspective on the critically important topic of emigration and the efforts to prevent it in the Cold War world. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand more about the haunting effects of defection. * Tara Zahra, author of Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars *Both seasoned Sovietologists and newcomers to Cold War history will find food for thought in this creative reevaluation of the era's geopolitics. * Publishers Weekly *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Defectors and the Spaces in Between Part I: Building Borders Chapter 1: From Displacement to Defection Chapter 2: Between Intelligence and Counterintelligence Chapter 3: Socialist Borders in a Global Age Part II: Governing Global Mobility Chapter 4: Soviets Abroad Chapter 5: International Waters Chapter 6: Cold War Airspaces Conclusion: After Defection Notes Sources and Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn intimate history of an ordinary Parisian citizen and his neighbors that reflects on the origins and radicalization of the French Revolution.What was it like to live through one of the most transformational periods in world history? In The Glory and the Sorrow, eminent historian Timothy Tackett answers this question through a masterful recreation of the world of Adrien Colson, a minor lawyer who lived in Paris at the end of the Old Regime and during the first eight years of the French Revolution. Based on over a thousand letters written by Colson to his closest friend, this book vividly narrates everyday life for an ordinary citizen during extraordinary times, as well as the life of a neighborhood on a small street in central Paris. It explores the real, day-to-day experience of a revolution: not only the thrill, the joy, and the enthusiasm, but also the uncertainty, the confusion, the anxiety, and the disappointments. While Colson reported on major events such as the storming of the Bastille and the King''s flight to Varennes, his correspondence underscores the extent to which the great majority of Parisians--and no doubt of the French population more generally--in no way anticipated the Revolution; the incessant circulation and power of rumors of impending disasters in Paris, not just in the summer of 1789 but continually from the autumn of 1789 throughout the Revolutionary decade; and how this affected popular psychology and behavior. In doing so, this account demonstrates how a Parisian and his neighbors were radicalized over the course of the Revolution.An evocative account of Colson''s time and place, The Glory and the Sorrow is a compelling microhistory of Revolutionary France.Trade ReviewThis fine book emphasises and dramatizes complexity and contingency in the lives of the capital and its residents. It reminds us how such quotidian topics as cnanine leashes, tenants leases, and urban gossip can open windows into another place and time. * Jeffrey Merrick, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century *A fascinating and tantalizing volume...that can be read with pleasure and recognition...by any scholar of the late Eighteenth century and its turbulent social and political histories. * David Andress, French History *In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on demand. But in 1936, the Soviet leadership criminalized abortion: the collectivization of the early 1930s was followed by famine that took the lives of millions of people, and the government grew eager to recover the population. Drawing on an amazing wealth of archival material, Nakachi traces the dynamic of Soviet reproductive policies that were invariably guided by pronatalist goals but almost always had damaging consequences. * Foreign Affairs *The Glory and the Sorrow is a stunning account that integrates a lifetime of research, knowledge, and deep understanding of one's historical actors. It wrestles with enduring questions regarding the local nature of popular activism and the political radicalization of most Parisians. It is a masterclass in animating history as experience, and it will be a gift for generations of scholars and students to come. * Katie Jarvis, H-France Forum *There are many reasons why Tim Tackett's contribution to our knowledge of the French Revolution commands such attention, but...one aspect in particular...[is its] place...in scholarship on emotions in the Revolution....While The Glory and the Sorrow centres on the life of one man, our understanding of his experience of the Revolution is couched very much in terms of his profound and shifting emotions—from the dizzying heights of 1789...to the 'sorrow' of 1794, as the intense expectations of the early years foundered against the crashing impact of war, betrayal and fear. Tim's unfolding of the events of the Revolution through the emotional registers of one man, offer us, as readers in the twenty-first century a way into understanding what the Revolution meant for the generation that lived through it....We must be grateful that...Colson's letters remain to us as a window on a tumultuous time in world history. * Marisa Linton, H-France Forum *Evocative and engaging.... Colson's own experience reveals the state of tension that existed throughout the revolutionary years, between inspiration and hope for a better future on the one hand, and anxiety, desperation and sheer terror on the other. This was not helped by the swirl of rumour and speculation that enveloped the political conversations among Colson's neighbours and friends. Yet it is equally clear that Colson worked hard to disentangle reliable from misleading and downright false information. This may have been because as a lawyer he was especially well-equipped to examine the evidence critically...but it is none the less a reminder to historians that just because a rumour was recorded, it did not mean that everyone credulously believed it. It also holds up a mirror to our own age, enveloped as it is in fake news, misinformation and gossip, no less than was Colson's world. * Michael Rapport, H-France Forum *In The Glory and the Sorrow, Tackett's lively depiction of the initial years of the Revolution challenges us all to match the vivacity and rigor of his analysis and apply them to the entire Revolutionary era....Tackett has painted a detailed portrait of how a small-time, single lawyer from a small, frontier town lived quietly in Paris until the shocks of 1789 transformed his world....By implication and example, it makes a number of important arguments about the causes and consequences of Revolutionary political transformation. * Jeff Horn, H-France Forum *On one level The Glory and the Sorrow can be read as a beautifully written biography, resurrecting a life that had been lost to history. But it is so much more than that, offering a compelling insight into both revolutionary dynamics and popular emotions in a city in crisis. * ALAN FORREST, University of York, FAMILY & COMMUNITY HISTORY *Adrien-Joseph Colson was the Mr Ordinary of ancien régime France....But 1789 also effected a radical change on Mr Ordinary Colson, a startling political awakening....Historians of the Revolution will warmly welcome this fine microhistorical biography. It shows Revolutionary radicalization at work on an utterly unremarkable figure who, in the Revolution, along with his neighbourhood, discovered a new set of values and a new political identity within a wider national fraternity. * Colin Jones, Times Literary Supplement *Drawing on an extraordinarily riche cache of letters, this biography of an ordinary eighteenth-century Parisian gives a marvelously vivid sense of what it was like to live through the last years of France's Old Regime and to participate, at ground level, in the French Revolution. Timothy Tackett has drawn on his unparalleled expertise in the period to produce a biography that is also an illumination—and one that college students in particular will appreciate. * David A. Bell, author of Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution *This rich and evocative microhistory brings the late Old Regime and French Revolution alive through the experiences of one small-time Parisian lawyer. Adrien-Joseph Colson turns out to be a likeable and very human figure. As Timothy Tackett explores his reflections and quandaries, The Glory and the Sorrow makes for compelling reading. Once again, Tackett analyzes revolutionary dynamics with insight and vision. * Suzanne Desan, author of The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France *Adrien Colson's letters reveal how utterly unexpected the French Revolution was for all who lived through it and how everyday citizens of Paris managed to ride the successive waves of optimism, excitement, uncertainty, and fear. Beautifully contextualized by one of the leading historians of the French Revolution, this book makes you feel like a witness to history. Unless you know how to travel through time, you can't get much closer to the events of the French Revolution than this. * Paul Friedland, Cornell University *There is no better way to experience the hopes, anxieties, and terrors churned out by the French Revolution than this very personal account of an ordinary man in Paris and no better guide to making sense of that experience than Tim Tackett. He has that rare talent for finding archival gems and then gracefully revealing their significance. The reader can't help but feel what Adrien Colson feels as he encounters the excitement, mysteries, and disappointments of revolutionary Paris. * Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters *Adrien Colson was a Parisian lawyer who lived through the waning ancien régime and the most turbulent years of the French Revolution. He would have disappeared from history were it not for the 1,000 letters he sent to a friend in central France. In them he gave eyewitness testimony of the revolution as it caught flame in ways neither he nor his neighbour...could have predicted. Timothy Tackett deftly uses the correspondence to create a vivid picture of Colson and his thrilling, terrifying times: his book stands in the tradition of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou. Colson is revealed as representative of the masses - a man caught up in events, in thrall to rumour and the bewildering speed of events.. * Michael Prodger, New Statesman *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue Chapter 1 Arrival in Paris Chapter 2 Life in Paris before the Revolution Chapter 3 Making a Living Chapter 4 Understanding the World Chapter 5 The World Changes Chapter 6 Days of Glory Chapter 7 Rumor and Revolution Chapter 8 Becoming a Radical Chapter 9 Days of Sorrow Conclusion Appendix: Translations of Selected Letters Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAmidst the vast literature on the parties and politics of revolutionary Russia and its near constant appropriation for presentist purposes over the years, States of Anxiety assesses the effects of the great scarcities and enormous losses that Russia experienced between 1914 and 1921, a period of dramatic civil conflicts and Russia''s long World War. Scarcities meant not only the deficits of necessary goods like food, but also their accompanying anxieties and fears. Using archival documents and materials of the period almost exclusively, this study explores how the tsarist, democratic liberal, democratic socialist, and Bolshevik regimes all addressed the forms and effects of scarcity and loss in ways they hoped would assure the revolutionary outcomes of their own historical imaginations. Looking closely at their efforts, it suggests how and why each failed to do so. Approaching the Russian revolutionary period in these terms involves exploring a broad range of connected issues. Material scarcities involved problems with market exchange, prices, and inflation, as well as procurement, production, and distribution. They involved fiscal policies, monetary emissions, and the effects of escalating debt. But they also directly engaged cultural understandings of fairness, sacrifice, and social difference, and were accompanied by what today would be called today the anxieties of food insecurity, the dangerous risks of unemployment, and a range of fears about family and community welfare. Officials and members of various state and public committees of various political orientations faced both the threats and actualities of market collapse, rampant speculation, black markets, increasingly visible social inequalities, and an array of emotional fields whose implications need to be understood.The statistical and other objective dimensions of scarcity and loss are generally described in ways that omit their complex emotional dimension, as the language of food insecurity obscures the actual effects of hunger. While taking into account important recent contributions to a large historiography, new efforts to decipher historical feelings and emotions, and attention to the languages through which events and feelings both were represented and given coherence, this book contributes to a broader understanding of the social and cultural foundations of uprisings and revolutionary upheavals.Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION: " Chap. 6: SCRIPTING REVOLUTION

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Book SynopsisMuch has been written about the French Revolution and especially its bloody phase known as the Reign of Terror. The actions of the leaders who unleashed the massacres and public executions, especially Maximilien Robespierre and Georges Danton, are well known. They inspired many soldiers in the Revolutionary cause, who did not survive, let alone thrive, in the post-Revolutionary world.In this work of historical reconstruction, Jeff Horn recounts the life of Alexandre Rousselin and narrates the history of the age of the French Revolution from the perspective of an eyewitness. From a young age, Rousselin worked for and with some of the era''s most important men and women, giving him access to the corridors of power. Dedication to the ideals of the Revolution led him to accept the need for a system of Terror to save the Republic in 1793-94. Rousselin personally utilized violent methods to accomplish the state''s goals in Provins and Troyes. This terrorism marked his life. It led to his denunciation by its victims. He spent the next five decades trying to escape the consequences of his actions. His emotional responses as well as the practical measures he took to rehabilitate his reputation illuminate the hopes and fears of the revolutionaries. Across the first four decades of the nineteenth century, Rousselin acquired a noble title, the comte de Saint-Albin, and emerged as a wealthy press baron of the liberal newspaper Le Constitutionnel. But he could not escape his past. He retired to write his own version of his legacy and to protect his family from the consequences of his actions as a terrorist during the French Revolution.Rousselin''s life traces the complex twists and turns of the Revolution and demonstrates how one man was able to remake himself, from a revolutionary to a liberal, to accommodate regime change.Trade ReviewRelatively short, fast-paced, insightful, and well-written.... The significance of Horn's modest biography is that it reveals that for its main and secondary actors, particularly those rising in stature in Paris, the Terror was an urban jungle of rival political networks, always changing, forever on the edge of betrayal. Fast-moving events and a Rousseauian expectation for transparency ironically yielded a local political culture in which personal relationships—what we inaccurately call friendships—assumed unusual importance. * Gary Kates, American Historical Review *Horn's biography provides more insight into Rousselin's shift from terrorist to liberal-what could be dubbed "the unmaking of a terrorist"-than it does from revolutionary to terrorist. * Howard G. Brown, Journal of Modern History *Jeff Horn's new book provides an illuminating account of this astonishing story * K Steven Vincent, The European Legacy *In this fascinating biography, Horn recounts the life of Alexandre Rousselin, a little-known French revolutionary. Born a poor Parisian in 1773, Rousselin worked as personal secretary to Camille Desmoulins and Georges Danton and oversaw the Terror in Troyes. Imprisoned and released five separate times in the aftermath, Rousselin served in the Ministry of War during the Directory and then kept a low profile under Napoleon. After 1815, he was a political liberal,...a supporter of King Louis Philippe, and founder of Le Constitutionnel, for many years the world's bestselling newspaper. This book is reminiscent of...Forrest Gump, as Rousselin constantly reappears at critical moments of French history from the Revolution until his death in 1843....Though well researched, with a firm base in archival sources and Rousselin's own published work, the book is popularly written with an eye toward engaging undergraduate students and general readers. * CHOICE *The amazing account of an enfant terrible of the French Revolution who, through a complex mixture of idealism and opportunism, survived each succeeding regime to become a wealthy liberal journalist under the Restoration and the July Monarchy; and who passed from personal secretary of Georges Danton, to the friend of Benjamin Constant — and perhaps the lover of Josephine de Beauharnais — the associate of Adolph Thiers, and even an acquaintance of King Louis-Philippe (who was godfather to his son). A spectacular story. * Timothy Tackett, University of California, Irvine *At the age of nineteen Alexandre Rousselin became an advocate of terror as an active revolutionary, trying to make a better world. He spent much of the rest of his long life, under a succession of political regimes, trying to live down his part in the heady years of the Revolution. Horn has made a compelling choice for a biographical study; he uses Rousselin's life to shine new light on the seismic years of the French Revolution and what it meant to become a revolutionary. * Marisa Linton, author of Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authenticity in the French Revolution *Jeff Horn recounts the astonishing tale of a poor Parisian boy who somehow became the private secretary of Danton and Desmoulins, survived the deadliest days of the Revolution, and died a wealthy newspaper magnate and liberal noble. This is an illuminating story of brilliance, daring, and maneuvering. * Peter McPhee, University of Melbourne *A gripping account of a fascinating figure who traversed some of the most momentous eras in modern history. Jeff Horn has a rare talent for finding overlooked historical evidence and a keen sense of the dilemmas faced by anyone who survives a high-level engagement with revolutionary politics. * Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: A Romantic Remembers the French Revolution Chapter 1: Education for Change, 1773-92 Chapter 2: The Making of a Terrorist, 1792-94 Chapter 3: The Consequences of Terror, 1794-96 Chapter 4: Rehabilitation: Political, Literary, and Social (1795-1815) Chapter 5: Liberalism and the Press (1816-38) Chapter 6: Remembering and Forgetting the French Revolution: Memories and Memoirs Conclusion: Satisfactions and Regrets of a Life in Revolution Appendix: Alexandre Rousselin and the Historians Timeline Notes Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis Revolution and Dictatorship: Russia 1917-1953 Revision Guide is part of the bestselling Oxford AQA History for A Level series developed by Sally Waller. Written to match the new AQA specification, this series helps you deepen your historical knowledge and develop vital analytical and evaluation skills. This revision guide offers the clearly structured revision approach of Recap, Apply, and Review to prepare you for exam success. Step-by-step exam practice strategies for all AQA question types are provided (including Source Analysis and essays linked to Key Concepts), as well as well-researched, targeted guidance based on what we now know from the new AQA examiner''s reports on Russia. Our original author team is back, offering expert advice, AS and A Level exam-style questions and Examiner Tips. Contents checklists help monitor revision progress; example student answers and suggested activity answers help you review your own work. This guide is perfect for use alongside the Studen

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Book SynopsisIn the desert sands of southern Jordan lies a once-hidden conflict landscape along the Hejaz Railway. Built at the beginning of the twentieth-century, this narrow-gauge 1,320 km track stretched from Damascus to Medina and served to facilitate participation in the annual Muslim Hajj to Mecca. The discovery and archaeological investigation of an unknown landscape of insurgency and counter-insurgency along this route tells a different story of the origins of modern guerrilla warfare, the exploits of T. E. Lawrence, Emir Feisal, and Bedouin warriors, and the dramatic events of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18. Ten years of research in this prehistoric terrain has revealed sites lost for almost 100 years: vast campsites occupied by railway builders; Ottoman Turkish machine-gun redoubts; Rolls Royce Armoured Car raiding camps; an ephemeral Royal Air Force desert aerodrome; as well as the actual site of the Hallat Ammar railway ambush. This unique and richly illustrated account from Nicholas Saunders tells, in intimate detail, the story of a seminal episode of the First World War and the reshaping of the Middle East that followed.Trade ReviewDesert Insurgency is a well-written and lavishly illustrated volume that describes the surveys and excavations of the Great Arab Revolt Project * Benjamin Adam Saidel, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies *This painstakingly detailed and richly illustrated book explores the interface between history, archaeology, and anthropology in one marginal desert area of southern Jordan. * A. Rassam, CHOICE *Table of ContentsMaps 1: Introduction 2: Into the Ghost-Land 3: Archaeology, Material Worlds, and the Arab Revolt 4: The Hejaz Railway: Faith, Conflict, and Afterlife 5: Guerillas and the 'Sultan's Mule' 6: Conflict on Jebel Sherra: Ma'an to the Blockhouse 7: 'Belly of the Beast': Abdullah's Fort to Batn al-Ghoul 8: Forts, Stations, and Ancestors: Wadi Rutm to Tel Shahm 9: Concealment, Raiding, and Ambush: Tooth Hill to Hallat Ammar 10: Beyond the Railway Timeline of Major Events on the Hejaz Railway Between Ma'an to Mudawwara, 1900-2018 Gazeteer

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Book SynopsisThe Mexican Revolution defined the sociopolitical experience of those living in Mexico in the twentieth century. Its subsequent legacy has provoked debate between those who interpret the ongoing myth of the Revolution and those who adopt the more middle-of-the-road reality of the regime after 1940. Taking account of these divergent interpretations, this Very Short Introduction offers a succinct narrative and analysis of the Revolution. Using carefully considered sources, Alan Knight addresses the causes of the upheaval, before outlining the armed conflict between 1910 and 1920, explaining how a durable regime was consolidated in the 1920s, and summing up the social reforms of the Revolution, which culminated in the radical years of the 1930s. Along the way, Knight places the conflict alongside other ''great'' revolutions, and compares Mexico with the Latin American countries that avoided the violent upheaval. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. The old regime and the causes of the revolution (1876-1910) ; 3. The Madero revolt and regime (1910-11) ; 4. Counter-revolution and constitutionalism (1913-14) ; 5. The revolution in power (1914-20) ; 6. The institutional revolution: the Sonoran Dynasty (1920-34) ; 7. The Depression, Cardenas and after (1930 -)

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Book SynopsisA unique study which uses the collapse of Tsarist Russia and its consequences to argue that the events on the often-forgotten Eastern Front of WWI had a stronger impact on the outcome of the war than is usually accepted.Trade ReviewIn this vivid reinterpretation of the Russian Empire's World War I, Joshua Sanborn provocatively and effectively reframes it as a war of decolonization and state collapse. Written in crisp and entertaining prose, this thought-provoking book is the most interesting and readable book published on Russia's World War I in recent times. * Eric Lohr, American University, Washington *This magnificent book is full of insights, with a robust challenge to received wisdom. Sanborn's talent as a writer makes the catastrophic story of imperial state failure a joy to read. * Alan Kramer, Trinity College Dublin *If the Eastern Front remains the "forgotten front", readers will have only themselves to blame, as Joshua Sanborn gives us a fresh, insightful look at the East in these crucial years. * Michael S. Neiberg, author of Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of War in 1914 *An outstanding contribution to the spate of books marking the centenary of the Great War. * P.E. Heineman, CHOICE *Sanborn's book is thus at once an everyday life history of the Russian Front, a gripping narrative of the key battles in which the Russian Empire participated, and a sophisticated conceptual argument about the stages of decolonization during the First World War. * The Russian Review *a wonderful book. It takes the reader to the heart of the experience of Russian participants in the Great War in an original and unprecedented way ... In terms of depth of description, sensitivity to the subject matter, elegance of expression, and originality of approach, Joshua A. Sanborn has few rivals. His breadth of vision not only encompasses crucial but often overlooked episodes ... he also shows their importance to the story. * Christopher Read, American Historical Review *The book was intended for multiple audiences, and it deserves to be read widely and with interest. * Evan Mawdsley, War in History Book *Sanborn's book serves as an admirable blend of the military, social and political history of the demise of the tsarist state. It offers much to chew on for specialists in the Russian field. * J. A. Grant, Slavonic and East European Review *Sanborn's command of his vast primary source base lends his narrative authority, his prose is unfailingly engaging, and his insights numerous. The many personal stories he tells of humble citizens caught up in this imperial "apocalypse" provide moving illustrations of the broad processes he charts. Above all, no previous treatment of Russia's Great War and revolution makes so palpable the scale of chaos and misery endured by the population as war-induced violence spun out of anyone's control. * Journal of Modern History *Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction: Imperial Challenge ; 1. The Outbreak of War and the Transformation of the Borderlands ; 2. The Front Migrates ; 3. Remobilizing the Military: Combat Innovation, POWs, and Forced Labor ; 4. Remobilizing Society: Nurses, Doctors, and Social Control ; 5. Revolution ; 6. Decolonization ; Conclusion: Imperial Apocalypse ; Works Cited

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Book SynopsisThe sugar planter Simon Taylor, who claimed ownership of over 2,248 enslaved people in Jamaica at the point of his death in 1813, was one of the wealthiest slaveholders ever to have lived in the British empire.Slavery was central to the eighteenth-century empire. Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, hundreds of thousands of enslaved people were brought from Africa to the Caribbean to toil and die within the brutal slave regime of the region, most of them destined for a life of labour on large sugar plantations. Their forced labour provided the basis for the immense fortunes of plantation owners like Taylor; it also produced wealth that poured into Britain. However, a tumultuous period that saw the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, as well as the rise of the abolitionist movement, witnessed new attacks on slavery and challenged the power of a once-confident slaveholder elite.In White Fury, Christer Petley uses Taylor''s rich and expressive letters to allow us aTrade ReviewWhite Fury tells a highly readable complete story... the volume is thoroughly researched and it is well-illustrated. * Robert Davis, New York Review of Books *[A]n exceptional book that will become a major point of reference for historians of the 18th-century Caribbean and scholars investigating the sudden abolition of the British slave trade in 1807... White Fury is a powerful contribution to scholarship on the British Atlantic in the age of revolutions, and it deserves to be widely read. * Reviews in History *Petleys brilliant biography of [Simon] Taylor (17401813)... not only describes the complicated feelings of a patriotic planter whose warm regard for his British heritage was increasingly not reciprocated by a Britain coming to think of planters as evil and retrograde but also captures the many challenges and opportunities available within the plantation economy during the tumultuous years of the French Revolution. * , Reviews in American History *Petley mines hundreds of extant letters written by Taylor, as well as a wide range of printed sources, to craft a highly readable account of the aspirations, everyday realities and crises faced by Jamaica's richest sugar planter... Petley has produced a smart, accessible biography of one of the most important slaveholders in the eighteenth-century British empire. * Brooke Newman, Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies *A subtle, sensitive and marvellously evocative biography of Jamaica's richest and most powerful planter, bringing powerfully to life the brutal but highly productive slave system which undergirded the success of the British Empire in the late eighteenth century. * Trevor Burnard, University of Melbourne *A revealing and persuasive account of one man's life at the centre of Britains slave empire in the Caribbean. In subtly tracing Simon Taylor's 'white fury' provoked by the movement for abolition Petley offers an original and provocative account of British slavery as it entered its death throes. * James Walvin, author of A Short History of Slavery *[A]n exceptional book that will become a major point of reference for historians of the 18th-century Caribbean and scholars investigating the sudden abolition of the British slave trade in 1807... White Fury is a powerful contribution to scholarship on the British Atlantic in the age of revolutions, and it deserves to be widely read. * Reviews in History *Table of ContentsIntroductionPart I: Foundations and Aspiration1: A West Indian Life2: Slave Empire3: Sugar and StrifePart II: Crises and Frustration4: The American Revolution5: Reactions6: New Revolutions7: War and AbolitionConclusions and LegaciesNotesFurther ReadingIndex

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Book SynopsisThis book provides a succinct yet up-to-date and challenging approach to the French Revolution of 1789-1799 and its consequences. Peter McPhee provides an accessible and reliable overview and one which deliberately introduces students to central debates among historians.The book has two main aims. One aim is to consider the origins and nature of the Revolution of 1789-99. Why was there a Revolution in France in 1789? Why did the Revolution follow its particular course after 1789? When was it ''over''? A second aim is to examine the significance of the Revolutionary period in accelerating the decay of Ancien Regime society. How ''revolutionary'' was the Revolution? Was France fundamentally changed as a result of it?Of particular interest to students will be the emphasis placed by the author on the repercussions of the Revolution on the practives of daily life: the lived experience of the Revolution. The author''s recent work on the environmental impact of the Revolution is also incorporated to provide a lively, modern, and rounded picture of France during this critical phase in the development of modern Europe.Trade ReviewOverall, I think [this book] is one of the best short histories of the Revolution to appear in many years. He is particularly successful in integrating specific case examples and quotations from the period into his general narrative and historiographic analysis and in thus conveying the drama and passion of the Revolution, so often passed over in texts of this kind. It also provides an excellent corrective to many recent "revisionist" texts, reasserting the importance of social dynamics before and during the Revolution and eshewing simplistic explanations of the Terror based solely on ideology or internal politics. Finally, I am impressed by his effective integration of a great deal of new scholarship published during the last decade, notably in his treatment of rural history and the experience of women during the Revolution. In sum, I would strongly recommend the book, and I look forward to trying it out in my own courses. * Timothy Tackett, University of California *Peter McPhee's history of the French Revolution is a real tour de force. More successfully than any other general history of the period, it combines an admirably clear narrative of this complex decade with an intelligent survey and analysis of other historians' perspectives. Beside them, McPhee sets out his own understandings of the Revolution sensibly and undogmatically so that readers can judge their merits. Beyond these strengths, the book is enriched by illuminating discussions of the effects of the Revolution on everyday lives of women and men and by a refreshing attention to rural France - the home of the great majority of French people at the time. Written in a lively and engaging way, this book cannot but draw readers more deeply into one of the most fascinating periods in world history. * Roderick Phillips, Carleton University *With an easy style and a clear purpose, Professor Peter McPhee pilots students past key questions of the origin and course, meaning and significance of the French Revolution. Touching most debates in the historiography, McPhee's history still offers a sound narrative of revolutionary events, egos and enactments, always in chapters of manageable length, always with an eye to evidence that's first-hand, fascinating and fresh. Scores of students and teachers will owe him a debt of thanks. * Adrian Jones, La Trobe University *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. France in the 1780s ; 2. The Crisis of the Old Regime ; 3. The Revolution of 1789 ; 4. The Reconstruction of France, 1789-91 ; 5. A Second Revolution, 1792 ; 6. The Revolution in the Balance, 1793 ; 7. The Terror: revolutionary Defence or Paranoia? ; 8. Ending the Revolution, 1795-9 ; 9. The Significance of the Revolution ; Maps ; Appendix 1: Chronology ; Appendix 2: The Revolutionary Calendar ; A Guide to Further Reading

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Book SynopsisHere is the first biography of Mario Savio, the brilliant leader of Berkeley''s Free Speech Movement, the largest and most disruptive student rebellion in American history. Savio risked his life to register black voters in Mississippi in the Freedom Summer of 1964 and did more than anyone to bring daring forms of non-violent protest from the civil rights movement to the struggle for free speech and academic freedom on American campuses. Drawing upon previously unavailable Savio papers, as well as oral histories from friends and fellow movement leaders, Freedom''s Orator illuminates Mario''s egalitarian leadership style, his remarkable eloquence, and the many ways he embodied the youthful idealism of the 1960s. The book also narrates, for the first time, his second phase of activism against Reaganite Imperialism in Central America and the corporatization of higher education. Including a generous selection of Savio''s speeches, Freedom''s Orator speaks with special relevance to a new genTrade ReviewRobby Cohen has written a gripping account of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement that took place in 1964, and the role of the student leader Mario Savio in that movement. Growing up in a working-class Catholic family, Savio struggled with a stammer, but he overcame his stammer to become a passionate and eloquent orator who led the Free Speech Movement in its struggle for political and academic freedom. Cohen tells the story of how Savio became a committed activist as the result of his experiences registering black voters in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, and goes on to give a blow-by-blow account of the Free Speech Movement, its struggles and its final success. Here at Berkeley the Free Speech Movement Cafe stands as a memorial to the Movement and Savio's role in it. Cohen's book is both a biography of a remarkable individual and an account of a pivotal moment in Berkeley's history. * G. Steven Martin, University of California, Berkeley *What Cohen's account clearly shows is that the FSM was...notable above all for speaking in ways that made political conversation fresh and meaningful, something that correlated with Savio's own non-sectarian leftism. * Logos *Robert Cohen tells Savio's story with passion and compassion... It is likely to be the standard reference work about Savio. * Jonah Raskin, San Francisco Chronicle *Cohen accomplishes the complex task of interweaving Mario's personal story with that of his political engagements, and deftly ties both to the history of the peace and social justice movements that followed. Among Cohen's many strengths as a biographer is his almost uncanny ability to understand Savio's motivations, to see the goodness of his heart, and to honestly consider the psychological demons Savio worked so hard to overcome... Robert Cohen's biography of Mario Savio is earnest, comprehensive, and written as a compelling narrative that does justice to its subject. For this we can all be profoundly grateful. * Bettina Aptheker, Tikkun *Mario Savio inspired a generation of young people, and this biography elegantly interweaves the various elements of this complex human being: his gift of speech, the profundity of his thought, his spirituality, his strong aversion to dogma, and above all, his unshakable moral core. * Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Part I: The Education of an American Radical ; 1. Child of War ; 2. The Making of a Civil Rights Activist ; 3. Freedom Summer ; Part II: Avatar of Student Protest: Leading the Free Speech Movement ; 4. From Polite Protest to the First Sit-In ; 5. The Police Car Blockade ; 6. Organizing and Negotiating ; 7. "We Almost Lost": The FSM in Crisis ; 8. Speaking Out and Sitting In ; 9. "Free Speech at Last" ; Part III: After the Revolution: A Voice Lost and Found ; 10. Descending from Leadership ; 11. Battling Back ; 12. Dying in the Saddle ; Appendix: Speeches ; Notes ; Index

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Book Synopsis''He thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood.''Set in the fictitious Provençal town of Plassans, The Fortune of the Rougons tells the story of Silvère and Miette, two idealistic young supporters of the republican resistance to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte''s coup d''état in December 1851. They join the woodcutters and peasants of the Var to seize control of Plassans, opposed by the Bonapartist loyalists led by Silvère''s uncle, Pierre Rougon. Meanwhile, the foundations of the Rougon family and its illegitimate Macquart branch are being laid in the brutal beginnings of the Imperial regime.The Fortune of the Rougons is the first in Zola''s famous Rougon-Macquart series of novels. In it we learn how the two branches of the family came about, and the origins of the hereditary weaknesses passed down the generations. Murder, treachery, and greed are the keynotes, and just as the EmpireTrade ReviewReading Brian Nelson's Introduction to The Fortune of the Rougons is a real treat. * Lisa Hill, ANZLitLovers *The edition I read was the Oxford World's Classics translation by Brian Nelson and it's excellent ... as an introduction [to Zola] this has been such an inspiring read. * Desperate Reader *

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