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By Subject: 20th Century History

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February 2020
Colonial Roots in African Soil

A Critical History of Forest Conservation in Sierra Leone

Munro, P.

“Empire forestry”—the broadly shared forest management practice that emerged in the West in the nineteenth century—may have originated in Europe, but it would eventually reshape the landscapes of colonies around the world. Melding the approaches of environmental history and political ecology, Colonial Roots in African Soil unravels the complex ways this dynamic played out in twentieth-century colonial Sierra Leone. While giving careful attention to topics such as forest reservation and exploitation, the volume moves beyond conservation practices and discourses, attending to the overlapping social, economic, and political contexts that have shaped approaches to forest management over time.

Subjects: Environmental Studies Colonialism 20th Century History
February 2020
Beyond Posthumanism

The German Humanist Tradition and the Future of the Humanities

Mathäs, A.

Kant, Goethe, Schiller and other eighteenth-century German intellectuals loom large in the history of the humanities—both in terms of their individual achievements and their collective embodiment of the values that inform modern humanistic inquiry. Taking full account of the manifold challenges that the humanities face today, this volume recasts the question of their viability by tracing their long-disputed premises in German literature and philosophy. Through insightful analyses of key texts, Alexander Mathäs mounts a broad defense of the humanistic tradition, emphasizing its pursuit of a universal ethics and ability to render human experiences comprehensible through literary imagination.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Educational Studies
eBook available May 2019
José Antonio Primo de Rivera

The Reality and Myth of a Spanish Fascist Leader

Thomàs, J. M.

There are few individuals in modern Spanish history that have been as thoroughly mythologized as José Antonio Primo de Rivera, a leading figure in the Spanish Civil War who was executed by the Republicans in 1936 and celebrated as a martyr following the victory of the Falangists. In this long-awaited translation, Joan Maria Thomàs provides a measured, exhaustively researched study of Primo de Rivera’s personality, beliefs, and political activity. His biography shows us a man dedicated to the creation of a fascist political regime that he aspired to one day lead, while at the same carefully distinguishing his aims from those of the Falangists and the Franco Regime.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available May 2019
Gustav Stresemann

The Crossover Artist

Pohl, K. H.

As a foreign minister and chancellor of Weimar Germany, Gustav Stresemann is a familiar figure for students of German history – one who, for many, embodied the best qualities of German interwar liberalism. However, a more nuanced and ambivalent picture emerges in this award-winning biography, which draws on extensive research and new archival material to enrich our understanding of Stresmann’s public image and political career. It memorably explores the personality of a brilliant but flawed politician who endured class anxiety and social marginalization, and who died on the eve of Germany’s descent into economic and political upheaval.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History General History
eBook available June 2019
The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere

From the Enlightenment to the Indignados

Jiménez Torres, D. & Villamediana González, L. (eds)

Since the explosion of the indignados movement beginning in 2011, there has been a renewed interest in the concept of the “public sphere” in a Spanish context: how it relates to society and to political power, and how it has evolved over the centuries. The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere brings together contributions from leading scholars in Hispanic studies, across a wide range of disciplines, to investigate various aspects of these processes, offering a long-term, panoramic view that touches on one of the most urgent issues for contemporary European societies.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Sociology
eBook available January 2019
The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State

Histories of a Key Concept in the Nordic Countries

Edling, N. (ed)

In discussions of economics, governance, and society in the Nordic countries, “the welfare state” is a well-worn analytical concept. However, there has been much less scholarly energy devoted to historicizing this idea beyond its postwar emergence. In this volume, specialists from Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland chronicle the historical trajectory of “the welfare state,” tracing the variable ways in which it has been interpreted, valued, and challenged over time. Each case study generates valuable historical insights into not only the history of Northern Europe, but also the welfare state itself as both a phenomenon and a concept.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History Political Economy
eBook available March 2019
The Indoctrination of the Wehrmacht

Nazi Ideology and the War Crimes of the German Military

Sait, B.

Far from the image of an apolitical, “clean” Wehrmacht that persists in popular memory, German soldiers regularly cooperated with organizations like the SS in the abuse and murder of countless individuals during the Second World War. This in-depth study demonstrates that a key factor in the criminalization of the Wehrmacht was the intense political indoctrination imposed on its members. At the instigation of senior leadership, many ordinary German soldiers and officers became ideological warriors who viewed their enemies in racial and political terms—a project that was but one piece of the broader effort to socialize young men during the Nazi era.

Subjects: WWII History Genocide Studies 20th Century History
eBook available March 2019
Rampart Nations

Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism

Berezhnaya, L. & Hein-Kircher, H. (eds)

The “bulwark” or antemurale myth—whereby a region is imagined as a defensive barrier against a dangerous Other—has been a persistent strand in the development of Eastern European nationalisms. While historical studies of the topic have typically focused on clashes and overlaps between sociocultural and religious formations, Rampart Nations delves deeper to uncover the mutual transfers and multi-sided national and interconfessional conflicts that helped to spread bulwark myths through Europe’s eastern periphery over several centuries. Ranging from art history to theology to political science, this volume offers new ways of understanding the political, social, and religious forces that continue to shape identity in Eastern Europe.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Religion
eBook available March 2019
Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire

Transnational Approaches

Habermas, R. (ed)

With its rapid industrialization, modernization, and gradual democratization, Imperial Germany has typically been understood in secular terms. However, religion and religious actors actually played crucial roles in the history of the Kaiserreich, a fact that becomes particularly evident when viewed through a transnational lens. In this volume, leading scholars of sociology, religious studies, and history study the interplay of secular and religious worldviews beyond the simple interrelation of practices and ideas. By exploring secular perspectives, belief systems, and rituals in a transnational context, they provide new ways of understanding how the borders between Imperial Germany’s secular and religious spheres were continually made and remade.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Religion
eBook available April 2019
Luso-Tropicalism and Its Discontents

The Making and Unmaking of Racial Exceptionalism

Anderson, W., Roque, R., & Ventura Santos, R. (eds)

Modern perceptions of race across much of the Global South are indebted to the Brazilian social scientist Gilberto Freyre, who in works such as The Masters and the Slaves claimed that Portuguese colonialism produced exceptionally benign and tolerant race relations. This volume radically reinterprets Freyre’s Luso-tropicalist arguments and critically engages with the historical complexity of racial concepts and practices in the Portuguese-speaking world. Encompassing Brazil as well as Portuguese-speaking societies in Africa, Asia, and even Portugal itself, it places an interdisciplinary group of scholars in conversation to challenge the conventional understanding of twentieth-century racialization, proffering new insights into such controversial topics as human plasticity, racial amalgamation, and the tropes and proxies of whiteness.

Subjects: Colonialism 20th Century History Sociology
eBook available August 2019
Hazardous Chemicals

Agents of Risk and Change, 1800-2000

Homburg, E. & Vaupel, E. (eds)

Although poisonous substances have been a hazard for the whole of human history, it is only with the development and large-scale production of new chemical substances over the last two centuries that toxic, manmade pollutants have become such a varied and widespread danger. Covering a host of both notorious and little-known chemicals, the chapters in this collection investigate the emergence of specific toxic, pathogenic, carcinogenic, and ecologically harmful chemicals as well as the scientific, cultural and legislative responses they have prompted. Each study situates chemical hazards in a long-term and transnational framework and demonstrates the importance of considering both the natural and the social contexts in which their histories have unfolded.

Subjects: Environmental Studies 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
September 2019
Constructing Industrial Pasts

Heritage, Historical Culture and Identity in Regions Undergoing Structural Economic Transformation

Berger, S. (ed)

Since the 1960s, nations across the “developed world” have been profoundly shaped by deindustrialization. In regions in which previously dominant industries faced crises or have disappeared altogether, industrial heritage offers a fascinating window into the phenomenon’s cultural dimensions. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, even as forms of industrial heritage provide anchors of identity for local populations, their meanings remain deeply contested, as both radical and conservative varieties of nostalgia intermingle with critical approaches and straightforward apologias for a past that was often full of pain, exploitation and struggle.

Subjects: 20th Century History Development Studies General Cultural Studies
September 2019
Entangled Entertainers

Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Hödl, K.

Viennese popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century was the product of the city’s Jewish and non-Jewish residents alike. While these two communities interacted in a variety of ways to their mutual benefit, Jewish culture was also inevitably shaped by the city’s persistent bouts of antisemitism. This fascinating study explores how Jewish artists, performers, and impresarios reacted to prejudice, showing how they articulated identity through performative engagement rather than anchoring it in origin and descent. In this way, they attempted to transcend a racialized identity even as they indelibly inscribed their Jewish existence into the cultural history of the era.

Subjects: Jewish Studies 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
September 2019
A Sad Fiasco

Colonial Concentration Camps in Southern Africa, 1900–1908

Kreienbaum, J.

Only in recent years has the history of European colonial concentration camps in Africa—in which thousands of prisoners died in appalling conditions—become widely known beyond a handful of specialists. Although they preceded the Third Reich by many decades, the camps’ newfound notoriety has led many to ask to what extent they anticipated the horrors of the Holocaust. Were they designed for mass killing, a misbegotten attempt at modernization, or something else entirely? A Sad Fiasco confronts this difficult question head-on, reconstructing the actions of colonial officials in both British South Africa and German South-West Africa as well as the experiences of internees to explore both the similarities and the divergences between the African camps and their Nazi-era successors.

Subjects: Genocide Studies Colonialism 20th Century History
October 2019
Germany On Their Minds

German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988

Schenderlein, A. C.

Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, approximately ninety thousand German Jews fled their homeland and settled in the United States, prior to that nation closing its borders to Jewish refugees. And even though many of them wanted little to do with Germany, the circumstances of the Second World War and the postwar era meant that engagement of some kind was unavoidable—whether direct or indirect, initiated within the community itself or by political actors and the broader German public. This book carefully traces these entangled histories on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrating the remarkable extent to which German Jews and their former fellow citizens helped to shape developments from the Allied war effort to the course of West German democratization.

Subjects: Jewish Studies Refugee & Migration Studies 20th Century History
December 2019
A Human Garden

French Policy and the Transatlantic Legacies of Eugenic Experimentation

Rosental, P.-A.

Well into the 1980s, Strasbourg, France, was the site of a curious and little-noted experiment: Ungemach, a garden city dating back to the high days of eugenic experimentation that offered luxury living to couples who were deemed biologically fit and committed to contractual childbearing targets. Supported by public authorities, Ungemach aimed to accelerate human evolution by increasing procreation among eugenically selected parents. In this fascinating history, Paul-André Rosental gives an account of Ungemach’s origins and its perplexing longevity. He casts a troubling light on the influence that eugenics continued to exert—even decades after being discredited as a pseudoscience—in realms as diverse as developmental psychology, postwar policymaking, and liberal-democratic ideals of personal fulfilment.

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology
eBook available February 2018
A Living Past

Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America

Soluri, J., Leal, C., & Pádua, J. A. (eds)

Though still a relatively young field, the study of Latin American environmental history is blossoming, as the contributions to this definitive volume demonstrate. Bringing together thirteen leading experts on the region, A Living Past synthesizes a wide range of scholarship to offer new perspectives on environmental change in Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean since the nineteenth century. Each chapter provides insightful, up-to-date syntheses of current scholarship on critical countries and ecosystems (including Brazil, Mexico, the Caribbean, the tropical Andes, and tropical forests) and such cross-cutting themes as agriculture, conservation, mining, ranching, science, and urbanization. Together, these studies provide valuable historical contexts for making sense of contemporary environmental challenges facing the region.

Subjects: Environmental Studies 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available January 2018
The Witness as Object

Video Testimony in Memorial Museums

Jong, S. de

In recent years, historical witnessing has emerged as a category of "museum object." Audiovisual recordings of interviews with individuals remembering events of historical importance are now integral to the collections and research activities of museums. They have also become important components in narrative and exhibition design strategies. With a focus on Holocaust museums, this study scrutinizes for the first time the new global phenomenon of the "musealization" of the witness to history, exploring the processes, prerequisites, and consequences of the transformation of video testimonies into exhibits.

Subjects: Museum Studies 20th Century History Media Studies
eBook available January 2018
The Ethics of Seeing

Photography and Twentieth-Century German History

Evans, J., Betts P., & Hoffmann, S.-L. (eds)

Throughout Germany’s tumultuous twentieth century, photography was an indispensable form of documentation. Whether acting as artists, witnesses, or reformers, both professional and amateur photographers chronicled social worlds through successive periods of radical upheaval. The Ethics of Seeing brings together an international group of scholars to explore the complex relationship between the visual and the historic in German history. Emphasizing the transformation of the visual arena and the ways in which ordinary people made sense of world events, these revealing case studies illustrate photography’s multilayered role as a new form of representation, a means to subjective experience, and a fresh mode of narrating the past.

Subjects: 20th Century History Media Studies
eBook available January 2018
The Wars of Yesterday

The Balkan Wars and the Emergence of Modern Military Conflict, 1912-13

Boeckh, K. & Rutar, S. (eds)

Though persistently overshadowed by the Great War in historical memory, the two Balkan conflicts of 1912–1913 were among the most consequential of the early twentieth century. By pitting the states of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro against a diminished Ottoman Empire—and subsequently against one another—they anticipated many of the horrors of twentieth-century warfare even as they produced the tense regional politics that helped spark World War I. Bringing together an international group of scholars, this volume applies the social and cultural insights of the “new military history” to revisit this critical episode with a central focus on the experiences of both combatants and civilians during wartime.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available June 2018
Democracy in Modern Europe

A Conceptual History

Kurunmäki, J., Nevers, J., & te Velde, H. (eds)

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world. Democracy in Modern Europe surveys the conceptual history of democracy in modern Europe, from the Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth century through both world wars and the rise of welfare states to the present era of the European Union. Exploring individual countries as well as regional dynamics, this volume comprises a tightly organized, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date exploration of a foundational issue in European political and intellectual history.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
April 2018
Basic and Applied Research

The Language of Science Policy in the Twentieth Century

Kaldewey, D. & Schauz, D. (eds)

The distinction between basic and applied research was central to twentieth-century science and policymaking, and if this framework has been contested in recent years, it nonetheless remains ubiquitous in both scientific and public discourse. Employing a transnational, diachronic perspective informed by historical semantics, this volume traces the conceptual history of the basic–applied distinction from the nineteenth century to today, taking stock of European developments alongside comparative case studies from the United States and China. It shows how an older dichotomy of pure and applied science was reconceived in response to rapid scientific progress and then further transformed by the geopolitical circumstances of the postwar era.

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology
eBook available August 2018
Nation Branding in Modern History

Viktorin, C., Gienow-Hecht, J. C. E., Estner, A., & Will, M. K. (eds)

A recent coinage within international relations, “nation branding” designates the process of highlighting a country’s positive characteristics for promotional purposes, using techniques similar to those employed in marketing and public relations. Nation Branding in Modern History takes an innovative approach to illuminating this contested concept, drawing on fascinating case studies in the United States, China, Poland, Suriname, and many other countries, from the nineteenth century to the present. It supplements these empirical contributions with a series of historiographical essays and analyses of key primary documents, making for a rich and multivalent investigation into the nexus of cultural marketing, self-representation, and political power.

Subjects: Postwar History 20th Century History Political Economy
eBook available September 2018
Gulag Memories

The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia's Repressive Past

Bogumił, Z.

Though the institution of the Gulag was nominally closed over half a decade ago, it lives on as an often hotly contested site of memory in the post-socialist era. This ethnographic study takes a holistic, comprehensive approach to understanding memories of the Gulag, and particularly the language of commemoration that surrounds it in present-day Russian society. It focuses on four regions of particular historical significance—the Solovetsky Islands, the Komi Republic, the Perm region, and Kolyma—to carefully explore how memories become a social phenomenon, how objects become heritage, and how the human need to create sites of memory has preserved the Gulag in specific ways today.

Subjects: 20th Century History Postwar History
eBook available November 2018
Probing the Limits of Categorization

The Bystander in Holocaust History

Morina, C. & Thijs, K. (eds)

Of the three categories that Raul Hilberg developed in his analysis of the Holocaust—perpetrators, victims, and bystanders—it is the last that is the broadest and most difficult to pinpoint. Described by Hilberg as those who were “once a part of this history,” bystanders present unique challenges for those seeking to understand the decisions, attitudes, and self-understanding of historical actors who were neither obviously the instigators nor the targets of Nazi crimes. Combining historiographical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives on the bystander, the case studies in this book provide powerful insights into the complex social processes that accompany state-sponsored genocidal violence.

Subjects: Genocide Studies Jewish Studies 20th Century History
eBook available November 2018
Embers of Empire

Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1918

Miller, P. & Morelon, C. (eds)

The collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of World War I ushered in a period of radical change for East-Central European political structures and national identities. Yet this transformed landscape inevitably still bore the traces of its imperial past. Breaking with traditional histories that take 1918 as a strict line of demarcation, this collection focuses on the complexities that attended the transition from the Habsburg Empire to its successor states. In so doing, it produces new and more nuanced insights into the persistence and effectiveness of imperial institutions, as well as the sources of instability in the newly formed nation-states.

Subjects: 20th Century History WWI History
eBook available November 2018
Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion

Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe

Crouthamel, J., Geheran, M., Grady, T., & Köhne, J. B. (eds)

During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, and experientially diverse, to an extent that resists containment within a simple historical narrative. While antisemitism and Jewish disillusionment have dominated many previous studies of the topic, this collection aims to recapture the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life in the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike during the First World War. Here, scholars from multiple disciplines explore rare sources and employ innovative methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, cultural legacies of the war, and memory politics.

Subjects: Jewish Studies WWI History 20th Century History
eBook available November 2018
Explorations and Entanglements

Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I

Berghoff, H., Biess, F., & Strasser, U. (eds)

Traditionally, Germany has been considered a minor player in Pacific history: its presence there was more limited than that of other European nations, and whereas its European rivals established themselves as imperial forces beginning in the early modern era, Germany did not seriously pursue colonialism until the nineteenth century. Yet thanks to recent advances in the field emphasizing transoceanic networks and cultural encounters, it is now possible to develop a more nuanced understanding of the history of Germans in the Pacific. The studies gathered here offer fascinating research into German missionary, commercial, scientific, and imperial activity against the backdrop of the Pacific’s overlapping cultural circuits and complex oceanic transits.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Colonialism
eBook available November 2018
From Weimar to Hitler

Studies in the Dissolution of the Weimar Republic and the Establishment of the Third Reich, 1932-1934

Beck, H. & Jones, L. E. (eds)

Though often depicted as a rapid political transformation, the Nazi seizure of power was in fact a process that extended from the appointment of the Papen cabinet in the early summer of 1932 through the Röhm blood purge two years later. Across fourteen rigorous and carefully researched chapters, From Weimar to Hitler offers a compelling collective investigation of this critical period in modern German history. Each case study presents new empirical research on the crisis of Weimar democracy, the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship, and Hitler’s consolidation of power. Together, they provide multiple perspectives on the extent to which the triumph of Nazism was historically predetermined or the product of human miscalculation and intent.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available November 2018
The CSCE and the End of the Cold War

Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972-1990

Badalassi, N. & Snyder, S. B. (eds)

From its inception, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) provoked controversy. Today it is widely regarded as having contributed to the end of the Cold War. Bringing together new and innovative research on the CSCE, this volume explores questions key to understanding the Cold War: What role did diplomats play in shaping the 1975 Helsinki Final Act? How did that agreement and the CSCE more broadly shape societies in Europe and North America? And how did the CSCE and activists inspired by the Helsinki Final Act influence the end of the Cold War?

Subjects: Postwar History 20th Century History Peace & Conflict Studies
eBook available October 2018
Polish Cinema

A History

Haltof, M.

First published in 2002, Marek Haltof’s seminal volume was the first comprehensive English-language study of Polish cinema, providing a much-needed survey of one of Europe’s most distinguished—yet unjustly neglected—film cultures. Since then, seismic changes have reshaped Polish society, European politics, and the global film industry. This thoroughly revised and updated edition takes stock of these dramatic shifts to provide an essential account of Polish cinema from the nineteenth century to today, covering such renowned figures as Kieślowski, Skolimowski, and Wajda along with vastly expanded coverage of documentaries, animation, and television, all set against the backdrop of an ever-more transnational film culture.

Subjects: Film Studies General Cultural Studies 20th Century History
eBook available October 2018
The Politics of Authenticity

Countercultures and Radical Movements across the Iron Curtain, 1968-1989

Häberlen, J. C., Keck-Szajbel, M., & Mahoney, K. (eds)

Following the convulsions of 1968, one element uniting many of the disparate social movements that arose across Europe was the pursuit of an elusive “authenticity” that could help activists to understand fundamental truths about themselves—their feelings, aspirations, sexualities, and disappointments. This volume offers a fascinating exploration of the politics of authenticity as they manifested themselves among such groups as Italian leftists, East German lesbian activists, and punks on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Together they show not only how authenticity came to define varied social contexts, but also how it helped to usher in the neoliberalism of a subsequent era.

Subjects: Postwar History Sociology 20th Century History
eBook available December 2018
Humanitarianism and Media

1900 to the Present

Paulmann, J. (ed)

From Christian missionary publications to the media strategies employed by today’s NGOs, this interdisciplinary collection explores the entangled histories of humanitarianism and media. It traces the emergence of humanitarian imagery in the West and investigates how the meanings of suffering and aid have been constructed in a period of evolving mass communication, demonstrating the extent to which many seemingly new phenomena in fact have long historical legacies. Ultimately, the critical histories collected here help to challenge existing asymmetries and help those who advocate a new cosmopolitan consciousness recognizing the dignity and rights of others.

Subjects: Media Studies 20th Century History
eBook available December 2018
Germany and the Middle East

From Kaiser Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel

Steininger, R.

For over a century, the Middle East has weathered seemingly endless conflicts, ensnaring political players from around the world. And perhaps no nation has displayed a greater range of policies toward, and experiences in, the region than Germany, as this short and accessible volume demonstrates. Beginning with Kaiser Wilhelm’s intermittent support for Zionism, it follows the course of German-Mideast relations through two world wars and the rise of Adolf Hitler. As Steininger shows, the crimes of the Third Reich have inevitably shaped postwar German Mideast policy, with Germany emerging as one of Israel’s staunchest supporters while continuing to navigate the region’s complex international, religious, and energy politics.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available December 2018
Law, History, and Justice

Debating German State Crimes in the Long Twentieth Century

Weinke, A.

Since the nineteenth century, the development of international humanitarian law has been marked by complex entanglements of legal theory, historical trauma, criminal prosecution, historiography, and politics. All of these factors have played a role in changing views on the applicability of international law and human-rights ideas to state-organized violence, which in turn have been largely driven by transnational responses to German state crimes. Here, Annette Weinke gives a groundbreaking long-term history of the political, legal and academic debates concerning German state and mass violence in the First World War, during the National Socialist era and the Holocaust, and under the GDR.

Subjects: Peace & Conflict Studies 20th Century History
eBook available May 2017
Fascism without Borders

Transnational Connections and Cooperation between Movements and Regimes in Europe from 1918 to 1945

Bauerkämper, A. & Rossolińki-Liebe, G. (eds)

It is one of the great ironies of the history of fascism that, despite their fascination with ultra-nationalism, its adherents understood themselves as members of a transnational political movement. While a true “Fascist International” has never been established, European fascists shared common goals and sentiments as well as similar worldviews. They also drew on each other for support and motivation, even though relations among them were not free from misunderstandings and conflicts. Through a series of fascinating case studies, this expansive collection examines fascism’s transnational dimension, from the movements inspired by the early example of Fascist Italy to the international antifascist organizations that emerged in subsequent years.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available May 2017
Let Them Not Return

Sayfo – The Genocide Against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire

Gaunt, D., Atto, N., & Barthoma, S. O. (eds)

The mass killing of Ottoman Armenians is today widely recognized, both within and outside scholarly circles, as an act of genocide. What is less well known, however, is that it took place within a broader context of Ottoman violence against minority groups during and after the First World War. Among those populations decimated were the indigenous Christian Assyrians (also known as Syriacs or Chaldeans) who lived in the borderlands of present-day Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. This volume is the first scholarly edited collection focused on the Assyrian genocide, or “Sayfo” (literally, “sword” in Aramaic), presenting historical, psychological, anthropological, and political perspectives that shed much-needed light on a neglected historical atrocity.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
eBook available May 2017
Between Empire and Continent

British Foreign Policy before the First World War

Rose, A.

Prior to World War I, Britain was at the center of global relations, utilizing tactics of diplomacy as it broke through the old alliances of European states. Historians have regularly interpreted these efforts as a reaction to the aggressive foreign policy of the German Empire. However, as Between Empire and Continent demonstrates, British foreign policy was in fact driven by a nexus of intra-British, continental and imperial motivations. Recreating the often heated public sphere of London at the turn of the twentieth century, this groundbreaking study carefully tracks the alliances, conflicts, and political maneuvering from which British foreign and security policy were born.

Subjects: 20th Century History WWI History
eBook available September 2017
Making Nordic Historiography

Connections, Tensions and Methodology, 1850-1970

Haapala, P., Jalava, M., & Larsson, S. (eds)

Is there a “Nordic history”? If so, what are its origins, its scope, and its defining features? In this informative volume, scholars from all five Nordic nations tackle a notoriously problematic historical concept. Whether recounting Foucault’s departure from Sweden or tracing the rise of movements such as “aristocratic empiricism,” each contribution takes a deliberately transnational approach that is grounded in careful research, yielding rich, nuanced perspectives on shifting and contested historical terrain.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available September 2017
Laborers and Enslaved Workers

Experiences in Common in the Making of Rio de Janeiro's Working Class, 1850-1920

Badaró Mattos, M.

From the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1888 abolition of slavery in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro was home to the largest urban population of enslaved workers anywhere in the Americas. It was also the site of an incipient working-class consciousness that expressed itself across seemingly distinct social categories. In this volume, Marcelo Badaró Mattos demonstrates that these two historical phenomena cannot be understood in isolation. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources, Badaró Mattos reveals the diverse labor arrangements and associative life of Rio’s working class, from which emerged the many strategies that workers both free and unfree pursued in their struggles against oppression.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Sociology
eBook available October 2017
The Persistence of Race

Continuity and Change in Germany from the Wilhelmine Empire to National Socialism

Day, L. & Haag, O. (eds)

Race in 20th-century German history is an inescapable topic, one that has been defined overwhelmingly by the narratives of degeneracy that prefigured the Nuremberg Laws and death camps of the Third Reich. As the contributions to this innovative volume show, however, German society produced a much more complex variety of racial representations over the first part of the century. Here, historians explore the hateful depictions of the Nazi period alongside idealized images of African, Pacific and Australian indigenous peoples, demonstrating both the remarkable fixity race had as an object of fascination for German society as well as the conceptual plasticity it exhibited through several historical eras.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available August 2017
The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938

Complicating the Picture

Wakabayashi, B. T. (ed)

First published in 2007, The Nanking Atrocity remains an essential resource for understanding the massacre committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanking, China during the winter of 1937-38. Through a series of deeply considered and empirically rigorous essays, it provides a far more complex and nuanced perspective than that found in works like Iris Chang’s bestselling The Rape of Nanking. It systematically reveals the flaws and exaggerations in Chang’s book while deflating the self-exculpatory narratives that persist in Japan even today. This second edition includes an extensive new introduction by the editor reflecting on the historiographical developments of the last decade, in advance of the 80th anniversary of the massacre.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
eBook available February 2017
Genocide in the Ottoman Empire

Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923

Shirinian, G. N. (ed)

The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic ones for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of citizens in an attempt to preserve “Turkey for the Turks,” setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide in pursuit of political ends while largely escaping accountability. While this brutal history is most widely known in the case of the Armenian genocide, few appreciate the extent to which the Empire’s Assyrian and Greek subjects suffered and died under similar policies. This comprehensive volume is the first to broadly examine the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in comparative fashion, analyzing the similarities and differences among them and giving crucial context to present-day calls for recognition.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
April 2017
Driving Modernity

Technology, Experts, Politics, and Fascist Motorways, 1922-1943

Moraglio, M.

On March 26th, 1923, in a formal ceremony, construction of the Milan–Alpine Lakes autostrada officially began, the preliminary step toward what would become the first European motorway. That Benito Mussolini himself participated in the festivities indicates just how important the project was to Italian Fascism. Driving Modernity recounts the twisting fortunes of the autostrada, which—alongside railways, aviation, and other forms of mobility—Italian authorities hoped would spread an ideology of technological nationalism. It explains how Italy ultimately failed to realize its mammoth infrastructural vision, addressing the political and social conditions that made a coherent plan of development impossible.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Mobility Studies
eBook available April 2017
The Greek Exodus from Egypt

Diaspora Politics and Emigration, 1937-1962

Dalachanis, A.

From the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, Greeks comprised one of the largest and most influential minority groups in Egyptian society, yet barely two thousand remain there today. This painstakingly researched book explains how Egypt’s once-robust Greek population dwindled to virtually nothing, beginning with the abolition of foreigners’ privileges in 1937 and culminating in the nationalist revolution of 1952. It reconstructs the delicate sociopolitical circumstances that Greeks had to navigate during this period, providing a multifaceted account of demographic decline that arose from both large structural factors as well as the decisions of countless individuals.

Subjects: 20th Century History Refugee & Migration Studies
eBook available February 2017
Metaphors of Spain

Representations of Spanish National Identity in the Twentieth Century

Moreno-Luzón, J. & Núñez Seixas, X. M. (eds)

The history of twentieth-century Spanish nationalism is a complex one, placing a set of famously distinctive regional identities against a backdrop of religious conflict, separatist tensions, and the autocratic rule of Francisco Franco. And despite the undeniably political character of that story, cultural history can also provide essential insights into the subject. Metaphors of Spain brings together leading historians to examine Spanish nationalism through its diverse and complementary cultural artifacts, from “formal” representations such as the flag to music, bullfighting, and other more diffuse examples. Together they describe not a Spanish national “essence,” but a nationalism that is constantly evolving and accommodates multiple interpretations.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available February 2017
Reluctant Skeptic

Siegfried Kracauer and the Crises of Weimar Culture

Craver, H. T.

The journalist and critic Siegfried Kracauer is best remembered today for his investigations of film and other popular media, and for his seminal influence on Frankfurt School thinkers like Theodor Adorno. Less well known is his earlier work, which offered a seismographic reading of cultural fault lines in Weimar-era Germany, with an eye to the confrontation between religious revival and secular modernity. In this discerning study, historian Harry T. Craver reconstructs and richly contextualizes Kracauer’s early output, showing how he embodied the contradictions of modernity and identified the quasi-theological impulses underlying the cultural ferment of the 1920s.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies Media Studies
eBook available June 2017
Poland Daily

Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish Cinema

Mazierska, E.

Like many Eastern European countries, Poland has seen a succession of divergent economic and political regimes over the last century, from prewar “embedded liberalism,” through the state socialism of the Soviet era, to the present neoliberal moment. Its cinema has been inflected by these changing historical circumstances, both mirroring and resisting them. This volume is the first to analyze the entirety of the nation’s film history—from the reemergence of an independent Poland in 1918 to the present day—through the lenses of political economy and social class, showing how Polish cinema documented ordinary life while bearing the hallmarks of specific ideologies.

Subjects: Film Studies 20th Century History Economic History
eBook available July 2017
Ruptures in the Everyday

Views of Modern Germany from the Ground

Bergerson, A. S. & Schmieding, L.

During the twentieth century, Germans experienced a long series of major and often violent disruptions in their everyday lives. Such chronic instability and precipitous change made it difficult for them to make sense of their lives as coherent stories—and for scholars to reconstruct them in retrospect. Ruptures in the Everyday brings together an international team of twenty-six researchers from across German studies to craft such a narrative. This collectively authored work of integrative scholarship investigates Alltag through the lens of fragmentary anecdotes from everyday life in modern Germany. Across ten intellectually adventurous chapters, this book explores the self, society, families, objects, institutions, policies, violence, and authority in modern Germany neither from a top-down nor bottom-up perspective, but focused squarely on everyday dynamics at work “on the ground.”

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available June 2017
Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History

Lässig, S. & Rürup, M. (eds)

What makes a space Jewish? This wide-ranging volume revisits literal as well as metaphorical spaces in modern German history to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them both within and outside of Jewish communities, and what the implications have been across different eras and social contexts. Working from an expansive concept of “the spatial,” these contributions look not only at physical sites but at professional, political, institutional, and imaginative realms, as well as historical Jewish experiences of spacelessness. Together, they encompass spaces as varied as early modern print shops and Weimar cinema, always pointing to the complex intertwining of German and Jewish identity.

Subjects: Jewish Studies 20th Century History 18th/19th Century History
eBook available July 2017
The Women's Liberation Movement

Impacts and Outcomes

Schulz, K. (ed)

For over half a century, the countless organizations and initiatives that comprise the Women’s Liberation movement have helped to reshape many aspects of Western societies, from public institutions and cultural production to body politics and subsequent activist movements. This collection represents the first systematic investigation of WLM’s cumulative impacts and achievements within the West. Here, specialists on movements in Europe systematically investigate outcomes in different countries in the light of a reflective social movement theory, comparing them both implicitly and explicitly to developments in other parts of the world.

Subjects: Gender Studies 20th Century History
eBook available October 2017
Global Exchanges

Scholarships and Transnational Circulations in the Modern World

Tournès, L. & Scott-Smith, G. (eds)

Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations. Global Exchanges provides a wide-ranging overview of this underresearched topic, examining the scope, scale and evolution of organized exchanges around the globe through the twentieth century. In doing so it dramatically reveals the true extent of organized exchange and its essential contribution for knowledge transfer, cultural interchange, and the formation of global networks so often taken for granted today.

Subjects: General Mobility Studies 20th Century History Educational Studies
eBook available October 2017
Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective

Meng, M. & Seipp, A. R. (eds)

Bringing together incisive contributions from an international group of colleagues and former students, Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective takes stock of the field of German history as exemplified by the extraordinary scholarly career of Konrad H. Jarausch. Through fascinating reflections on the discipline’s theoretical, professional, and methodological dimensions, it explores Jarausch’s monumental work as a teacher and a builder of scholarly institutions. In this way, it provides not merely a look back at the last fifty years of German history, but a path forward as new ideas and methods infuse the study of Germany’s past.

Subjects: 20th Century History WWII History Postwar History
eBook available October 2017
Eastern Europe Unmapped

Beyond Borders and Peripheries

Kacandes, I. & Komska, Y. (eds)

Arguably more than any other region, the area known as Eastern Europe has been defined by its location on the map. Yet its inhabitants, from statesmen to literati and from cultural-economic elites to the poorest emigrants, have consistently forged or fathomed links to distant lands, populations, and intellectual traditions. Through a series of inventive cultural and historical explorations, Eastern Europe Unmapped dispenses with scholars’ long-time preoccupation with national and regional borders, instead raising provocative questions about the area’s non-contiguous—and frequently global or extraterritorial—entanglements.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies General Geography
eBook available November 2017
Subjects, Citizens, and Others

Administering Ethnic Heterogeneity in the British and Habsburg Empires, 1867-1918

Gammerl, B.

Bosnian Muslims, East African Masai, Czech-speaking Austrians, North American indigenous peoples, and Jewish immigrants from across Europe—the nineteenth-century British and Habsburg Empires were characterized by incredible cultural and racial-ethnic diversity. Notwithstanding their many differences, both empires faced similar administrative questions as a result: Who was excluded or admitted? What advantages were granted to which groups? And how could diversity be reconciled with demands for national autonomy and democratic participation? In this pioneering study, Benno Gammerl compares Habsburg and British approaches to governing their diverse populations, analyzing imperial formations to reveal the legal and political conditions that fostered heterogeneity.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History Colonialism 20th Century History
eBook available May 2016
Fascist Interactions

Proposals for a New Approach to Fascism and Its Era, 1919-1945

Roberts, D. D.

Although studies of fascism have constituted one of the most fertile areas of historical inquiry in recent decades, more and more scholars have called for a new agenda with more research beyond Italy and Germany, less preoccupation with definition and classification, and more sustained focus on the relationships among different fascist formations before 1945. Starting from a critical assessment of these imperatives, this rigorous volume charts a historiographical path that transcends rigid distinctions while still developing meaningful criteria of differentiation. Even as we take fascism seriously as a political phenomenon, such an approach allows us to better understand its distinctive contradictions and historical variations.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available May 2016
Tropics of Vienna

Colonial Utopias of the Habsburg Empire

Bach, U. E.

The Austrian Empire was not a colonial power in the sense that fellow actors like 19th-century England and France were. It nevertheless oversaw a multinational federation where the capital of Vienna was unmistakably linked with its eastern periphery in a quasi-colonial arrangement that inevitably shaped the cultural and intellectual life of the Habsburg Empire. This was particularly evident in the era’s colonial utopian writing, and Tropics of Vienna blends literary criticism, cultural theory, and historical analysis to illuminate this curious genre. By analyzing the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Theodor Herzl, Joseph Roth, and other representative Austrian writers, it reveals a shared longing for alternative social and spatial configurations beyond the concept of the “nation-state” prevalent at the time.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available August 2016
Wartime Captivity in the 20th Century

Archives, Stories, Memories

Pathé, A.-M. & Théofilakis, F. (eds)

Long a topic of historical interest, wartime captivity has over the past decade taken on new urgency as an object of study. Transnational by its very nature, captivity’s historical significance extends far beyond the front lines, ultimately inextricable from the histories of mobilization, nationalism, colonialism, law, and a host of other related subjects. This wide-ranging volume brings together an international selection of scholars to trace the contours of this evolving research agenda, offering fascinating new perspectives on historical moments that range from the early days of the Great War to the arrival of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available April 2016
Whose Memory? Which Future?

Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe

Törnquist-Plewa, B. (ed)

Scholars have devoted considerable energy to understanding the history of ethnic cleansing in Europe, reconstructing specific events, state policies, and the lived experiences of victims. Yet much less attention has been given to how these incidents persist in collective memory today. This volume brings together interdisciplinary case studies conducted in Central and Eastern European cities, exploring how present-day inhabitants “remember” past instances of ethnic cleansing, and how they understand the cultural heritage of groups that vanished in their wake. Together these contributions offer insights into more universal questions of collective memory and the formation of national identity.

Subjects: 20th Century History Genocide Studies
eBook available June 2016
Rethinking Antifascism

History, Memory and Politics, 1922 to the Present

García, H., Yusta, M., Tabet, X., & Climaco, C. (eds)

Bringing together leading scholars from a range of nations, Rethinking Antifascism provides a fascinating exploration of one of the most vibrant sub-disciplines within recent historiography. Through case studies that exemplify the field’s breadth and sophistication, it examines antifascism in two distinct realms: after surveying the movement’s remarkable diversity across nations and political cultures up to 1945, the volume assesses its postwar political and ideological salience, from its incorporation into Soviet state doctrine to its radical questioning by historians and politicians. Avoiding both heroic narratives and reflexive revisionism, these contributions offer nuanced perspectives on a movement that helped to shape the postwar world.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available January 2016
Sacrifice and Rebirth

The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War

Cornwall, M. & Newman, J. P. (eds)

When Austria-Hungary broke up at the end of the First World War, the sacrifice of one million men who had died fighting for the Habsburg monarchy now seemed to be in vain. This book is the first of its kind to analyze how the Great War was interpreted, commemorated, or forgotten across all the ex-Habsburg territories. Each of the book’s twelve chapters focuses on a separate region, studying how the transition to peacetime was managed either by the state, by war veterans, or by national minorities. This “splintered war memory,” where some posed as victors and some as losers, does much to explain the fractious character of interwar Eastern Europe.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available March 2016
The Decolonial Mandela

Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S.

A significant contribution to the emerging literature on decolonial studies, this concise and forcefully argued volume lays out a groundbreaking interpretation of the “Mandela phenomenon.” Contrary to a neoliberal social model that privileges adversarial criminal justice and a rationalistic approach to war making, Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni identifies transformative political justice and a reimagined social order as key features of Nelson Mandela’s legacy. Mandela is understood here as an exemplar of decolonial humanism, one who embodied the idea of survivor’s justice and held up reconciliation and racial harmony as essential for transcending colonial modes of thought.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available April 2016
The Revolution before the Revolution

Late Authoritarianism and Student Protest in Portugal

Accornero, G.

Histories of Portugal’s transition to democracy have long focused on the 1974 military coup that toppled the authoritarian Estado Novo regime and set in motion the divestment of the nation’s colonial holdings. However, the events of this “Carnation Revolution” were in many ways the culmination of a much longer process of resistance and protest originating in universities and other sectors of society. Combining careful research in police, government, and student archives with insights from social movement theory, The Revolution before the Revolution broadens our understanding of Portuguese democratization by tracing the societal convulsions that preceded it over the course of the “long 1960s.”

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology
eBook available June 2016
Narratives in Motion

Journalism and Modernist Events in 1920s Portugal

Trindade, L.

Interwar Portugal was in many ways a microcosm of Europe’s encounter with modernity: reshaped by industrialization, urban growth, and the antagonism between liberalism and authoritarianism, it also witnessed new forms of media and mass culture that transformed daily life. This fascinating study of newspapers in 1920s Portugal explores how the new “modernist reportage” embodied the spirit of the era while mediating some of its most spectacular episodes, from political upheavals to lurid crimes of passion. In the process, Luís Trindade illuminates the twofold nature of that journalism—both historical account and material object, it epitomized a distinctly modern entanglement of narrative and event.

Subjects: Media Studies 20th Century History
eBook available August 2016
The Devil's Wheels

Men and Motorcycling in the Weimar Republic

Disko, S.

During the high days of modernization fever, among the many disorienting changes Germans experienced in the Weimar Republic was an unprecedented mingling of consumption and identity: increasingly, what one bought signaled who one was. Exemplary of this volatile dynamic was the era’s burgeoning motorcycle culture. With automobiles largely a luxury of the upper classes, motorcycles complexly symbolized masculinity and freedom, embodying a widespread desire to embrace progress as well as profound anxieties over the course of social transformation. Through its richly textured account of the motorcycle as both icon and commodity, The Devil’s Wheels teases out the intricacies of gender and class in the Weimar years.

Subjects: 20th Century History Gender Studies
September 2016
From Craftsmen to Capitalists

German Artisans from the Third Reich to the Federal Republic, 1939-1953

McKitrick, F. L.

Politically adrift, alienated from Weimar society, and fearful of competition from industrial elites and the working class alike, the independent artisans of interwar Germany were a particularly receptive audience for National Socialist ideology. As Hitler consolidated power, they emerged as an important Nazi constituency, drawn by the party’s rejection of both capitalism and Bolshevism. Yet, in the years after 1945, the artisan class became one of the pillars of postwar stability, thoroughly integrated into German society. From Craftsmen to Capitalists gives the first account of this astonishing transformation, exploring how skilled tradesmen recast their historical traditions and forged alliances with former antagonists to help realize German democratization and recovery.

Subjects: 20th Century History Economic History
eBook available November 2016
The Making of the Greek Genocide

Contested Memories of the Ottoman Greek Catastrophe

Sjöberg, E.

During and after World War I, over one million Ottoman Greeks were expelled from Turkey, a watershed moment in Greek history that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. And while few dispute the expulsion’s tragic scope, it remains the subject of fierce controversy, as activists have fought for international recognition of an atrocity they consider comparable to the Armenian genocide. This book provides a much-needed analysis of the Greek genocide as cultural trauma. Neither taking the genocide narrative for granted nor dismissing it outright, Erik Sjöberg instead recounts how it emerged as a meaningful but contested collective memory with both nationalist and cosmopolitan dimensions.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
November 2016
Transnational Struggles for Recognition

New Perspectives on Civil Society since the 20th Century

Gosewinkel, D. & Rucht, D. (eds)

Now more than ever, “recognition” represents a critical concept for social movements, both as a strategic tool and an important policy aim. While the subject’s theoretical and empirical dimensions have usually been studied separately, this interdisciplinary collection focuses on both to examine the pursuit of recognition against a transnational backdrop. With a special emphasis on the efforts of women’s and Jewish organizations in 20th-century Europe, the studies collected here show how recognition can be meaningfully understood in historical-analytical terms, while demonstrating the extent to which transnationalization determines a movement’s reach and effectiveness.

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology
eBook available December 2016
International Organizations and Environmental Protection

Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century

Kaiser, W. & Meyer, J.-H. (eds)

Pollution, resource depletion, habitat management, and climate change are all issues that necessarily transcend national boundaries. Accordingly, they and other environmental concerns have been a particular focus for international organizations from before the First World War to the present day. This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of professional communities, NGOs, regional bodies, the United Nations, and other international organizations during the twentieth century. It follows their efforts to shape debates about environmental degradation, develop binding intergovernmental commitments, and—following the seminal 1972 Conference on the Human Environment—implement and enforce actual international policies.

Subjects: Environmental Studies 20th Century History
December 2016
Legacies of Violence

Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia

Mason, R. (ed)

Whether in the form of warfare, dispossession, forced migration, or social prejudice, Australia’s sense of nationhood was born from—and continues to be defined by—experiences of violence. Legacies of Violence probes this brutal legacy through case studies that range from the colonial frontier to modern domestic spaces, exploring themes of empathy, isolation, and Australians’ imagined place in the world. Moving beyond the primacy that is typically accorded white accounts of violence, contributors place particular emphasis on the experiences of those perceived to be on the social periphery, repositioning them at the center of Australia’s relationship to global events and debates.

Subjects: 20th Century History 18th/19th Century History Colonialism
eBook available December 2016
Different Germans, Many Germanies

New Transatlantic Perspectives

Jarausch, K. H., Wenzel, H., & Goihl, K. (eds)

As much as any other nation, Germany has long been understood in terms of totalizing narratives. For Anglo-American observers in particular, the legacies of two world wars still powerfully define twentieth-century German history, whether through the lens of Nazi-era militarism and racial hatred or the nation’s emergence as a “model” postwar industrial democracy. This volume transcends such common categories, bringing together transatlantic studies that are unburdened by the ideological and methodological constraints of previous generations of scholarship. From American perceptions of the Kaiserreich to the challenges posed by a multicultural Europe, it argues for—and exemplifies—an approach to German Studies that is nuanced, self-reflective, and holistic.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available May 2015
Militant Around the Clock?

Left-Wing Youth Politics, Leisure, and Sexuality in Post-Dictatorship Greece, 1974-1981

Papadogiannis, N.

During the 1970s, left-wing youth militancy in Greece intensified, especially after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1974. This is the first study of the impact of that political activism on the leisure pursuits and sexual behavior of Greek youth, analyzing the cultural politics of left-wing organizations alongside the actual practices of their members. Through an examination of Maoists, Socialists, Euro-Communists, and pro-Soviet groups, it demonstrates that left-wing youth in Greece collaborated closely with comrades from both Western and Eastern European countries in developing their political stances. Moreover, young left-wingers in Greece appropriated American cultural products while simultaneously modeling some of their leisure and sexual practices on Soviet society. Still, despite being heavily influenced by cultures outside Greece, left-wing youth played a major role in the reinvention of a Greek “popular tradition.” This book critically interrogates the notion of “sexual revolution” by shedding light on the contradictory sexual transformations in Greece to which young left-wingers contributed.

Subject: 20th Century History
May 2015
The Respectable Career of Fritz K.

The Making and Remaking of a Provincial Nazi Leader

Berghoff, H. & Rauh, C.

Entrepreneur and Nazi functionary Fritz Kiehn lived through almost 100 years of German history, from the Bismarck era to the late Bonn Republic. A successful manufacturer, Kiehn joined the Nazi Party in 1930 and obtained a number of influential posts after 1933, making him one of the most powerful Nazi functionaries in southern Germany. These posts allowed him ample opportunity to profit from “Aryanizations” and state contracts. After 1945, he restored his reputation, was close to Adenauer's CDU during Germany's economic miracle, and was a respected and honored citizen in Trossingen. Kiehn's biography provides a key to understanding the political upheavals of the twentieth century, especially the workings of the corrupt Nazi system as well as the “coming to terms” with National Socialism in the Federal Republic.

Subject: 20th Century History
May 2015
Fellow Tribesmen

The Image of Native Americans, National Identity, and Nazi Ideology in Germany

Usbeck, F.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Germans exhibited a widespread cultural passion for tales and representations of Native Americans. This book explores the evolution of German national identity and its relationship with the ideas and cultural practices around “Indianthusiasm.” Pervasive and adaptable, imagery of Native Americans was appropriated by Nazi propaganda and merged with exceptionalist notions of German tribalism, oxymoronically promoting the Nazis’ racial ideology. This book combines cultural and intellectual history to scrutinize the motifs of Native American imagery in German literature, media, and scholarship, and analyzes how these motifs facilitated the propaganda effort to nurture national pride, racial thought, militarism, and hatred against the Allied powers among the German populace.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
May 2015
Fault Lines

Earthquakes and Urbanism in Modern Italy

Parrinello, G.

Earth’s fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, this book explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between “rural” and “urban,” “backwardness” and “development,” and “before” and “after,” shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats.

Subjects: Environmental Studies 20th Century History General Geography
June 2015
The Underground Reader

Sources in the Trans-Atlantic Counterculture

Jackson, J. H. & Saxe, R. F.

Every society has rebels, outlaws, troublemakers, and deviants. This collection of primary sources takes readers on a journey through the intellectual and cultural history of the “underground” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It demonstrates how thinkers in the US and Europe have engaged in an ongoing trans-Atlantic dialogue, inspiring one another to challenge the norms of Western society. Through ideas, artistic expression, and cultural practices, these thinkers radically defied the societies of which they were part. The readings chart the historical evolution of challenges to mainstream values -- some of which have themselves become mainstream -- from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
July 2015
The Rhythm of Eternity

The German Youth Movement and the Experience of the Past, 1900-1933

Adriaansen, R.-J.

The Weimar era in Germany is often characterized as a time of significant change. Such periods of rupture transform the way people envision the past, present, and future. This book traces the conceptions of time and history in the Germany of the early 20th century. By focusing on both the discourse and practices of the youth movement, the author shows how it reinterpreted and revived the past to overthrow the premises of modern historical thought. In so doing, this book provides insight into the social implications of the ideological de-historicization of the past.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available December 2015
Protest in Hitler's “National Community”

Popular Unrest and the Nazi Response

Stoltzfus, N. & Maier-Katkin, B. (eds)

That Hitler’s Gestapo harshly suppressed any signs of opposition inside the Third Reich is a common misconception. This book presents studies of public dissent that prove this was not always the case. It examines circumstances under which “racial” Germans were motivated to protest, as well as the conditions determining the regime’s response. Workers, women, and religious groups all convinced the Nazis to appease rather than repress “racial” Germans. Expressions of discontent actually increased during the war, and Hitler remained willing to compromise in governing the German Volk as long as he thought the Reich could salvage victory.

Subject: 20th Century History
July 2015
Strike Action and Nation Building

Labor Unrest in Palestine/Israel, 1899-1951

De Vries, D.

Strike-action has long been a notable phenomenon in Israeli society, despite forces that have weakened its recurrence, such as the Arab-Jewish conflict, the decline of organized labor, and the increasing precariousness of employment. While the impact of strikes was not always immense, they are deeply rooted in Israel's past during the Ottoman Empire and Mandate Palestine. Workers persist in using them for material improvement and to gain power in both the private and public sectors, reproducing a vibrant social practice whose codes have withstood the test of time. This book unravels the trajectory of the strikes as a rich source for the social-historical analysis of an otherwise nation-oriented and highly politicized history.

Subject: 20th Century History
July 2015
Television's Moment

Sitcom Audiences and the Sixties Cultural Revolution

Hodenberg, C. von

Television was one of the forces shaping the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when a blockbuster TV series could reach up to a third of a country’s population. This book explores television’s impact on social change by comparing three sitcoms and their audiences. The shows in focus – Till Death Us Do Part in Britain, All in the Family in the United States, and One Heart and One Soul in West Germany – centered on a bigoted anti-hero and his family. Between 1966 and 1979 they saturated popular culture, and managed to accelerate as well as deradicalize value changes and collective attitudes regarding gender roles, sexuality, religion, and race.

Subjects: 20th Century History Media Studies
October 2015
Recovered Territory

A German-Polish Conflict over Land and Culture, 1919-1989

Polak-Springer, P.

Upper Silesia, one of Central Europe’s most important industrial borderlands, was at the center of heated conflict between Germany and Poland and experienced annexations and border re-drawings in 1922, 1939, and 1945. This transnational history examines these episodes of territorial re-nationalization and their cumulative impacts on the region and nations involved, as well as their use by the Nazi and postwar communist regimes to legitimate violent ethnic cleansing. In their interaction with—and mutual influence on—one another, political and cultural actors from both nations developed a transnational culture of territorial rivalry. Architecture, spaces of memory, films, museums, folklore, language policy, mass rallies, and archeological digs were some of the means they used to give the borderland a “German”/“Polish” face. Representative of the wider politics of twentieth-century Europe, the situation in Upper Silesia played a critical role in the making of history’s most violent and uprooting eras, 1939–1950.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
April 2015
Germany and 'The West'

The History of a Modern Concept

Bavaj, R. & Steber, M. (eds)

“The West” is a central idea in German public discourse, yet historians know surprisingly little about the evolution of the concept. Contrary to common assumptions, this volume argues that the German concept of the West was not born in the twentieth century, but can be traced from a much earlier time. In the nineteenth century, “the West” became associated with notions of progress, liberty, civilization, and modernity. It signified the future through the opposition to antonyms such as “Russia” and “the East,” and was deployed as a tool for forging German identities. Examining the shifting meanings, political uses, and transnational circulations of the idea of “the West” sheds new light on German intellectual history from the post-Napoleonic era to the Cold War.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
April 2015
The History of Labour Intermediation

Institutions and Finding Employment in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Wadauer, S., Buchner, T., & Mejstrik, A. (eds)

Searching for a job has been an everyday affair in both modern and past societies, and employment a concern for both individuals and institutions. The case studies in this volume investigate job search and placement practices in European countries, Australia, and India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors explore how looking for work becomes a means by which participants (individuals, placement agents, trade unions, municipalities, administrations, state authorities, and schools) articulated specific interests, perspectives, and agendas. Taking an exploratory approach, the chapters illustrate different approaches to the history of employment and job searching, ranging from organizational and regulatory histories to the analysis of practices and autobiographical accounts. In the process, they uncover the interrelations of search practices and attempts to arrange placement services.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available April 2015
Music and International History in the Twentieth Century

Gienow-Hecht, J. (ed)

Bringing together scholars from the fields of musicology and international history, this book investigates the significance of music to foreign relations, and how it affected the interaction of nations since the late 19th century. For more than a century, both state and non-state actors have sought to employ sound and harmony to influence allies and enemies, resolve conflicts, and export their own culture around the world. This book asks how we can understand music as an instrument of power and influence, and how the cultural encounters fostered by music changes our ideas about international history.

Subjects: 20th Century History Media Studies
August 2015
Germans Against Nazism

Nonconformity, Opposition and Resistance in the Third Reich: Essays in Honour of Peter Hoffmann

Nicosia, F. R. & Stokes†, L. D. (eds)

Rather than being accepted by all of German society, the Nazi regime was resisted in both passive and active forms. This re-issued volume examines opposition to National Socialism by Germans during the Third Reich in its broadest sense. It considers individual and organized nonconformity, opposition, and resistance ranging from symbolic acts of disobedience to organized assassination attempts, and looks at how disparate groups such as the Jewish community, churches, conservatives, communists, socialists, and the military all defied the regime in their own ways.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available August 2015
Final Sale in Berlin

The Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity, 1930-1945

Kreutzmüller, C.

Before the Nazis took power, Jewish businesspeople in Berlin thrived alongside their non-Jewish neighbors. But Nazi racism changed that, gradually destroying Jewish businesses before murdering the Jews themselves. Reconstructing the fate of more than 8,000 companies, this book offers the first comprehensive analysis of Jewish economic activity and its obliteration. Rather than just examining the steps taken by the persecutors, it also tells the stories of Jewish strategies in countering the effects of persecution. In doing so, this book exposes a fascinating paradox where Berlin, serving as the administrative heart of the Third Reich, was also the site of a dense network for Jewish self-help and assertion.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
eBook available October 2015
Viktor Frankl's Search for Meaning

An Emblematic 20th-Century Life

Pytell, T.

First published in 1946, Viktor Frankl’s memoir Man’s Search for Meaning remains one of the most influential books of the last century, selling over ten million copies worldwide and having been embraced by successive generations of readers captivated by its author’s philosophical journey in the wake of the Holocaust. This long-overdue reappraisal examines Frankl’s life and intellectual evolution anew, from his early immersion in Freudian and Adlerian theory to his development of the “third Viennese school” amid the National Socialist domination of professional psychotherapy. It teases out the fascinating contradictions and ambiguities surrounding his years in Nazi Europe, including the experimental medical procedures he oversaw in occupied Austria and a stopover at the Auschwitz concentration camp far briefer than has commonly been assumed. Throughout, author Timothy Pytell gives a penetrating but fair-minded account of a man whose paradoxical embodiment of asceticism, celebrity, tradition, and self-reinvention drew together the complex strands of twentieth-century intellectual life.

Subject: 20th Century History
November 2015
The Germans and the Holocaust

Popular Responses to the Persecution and Murder of the Jews

Schrafstetter, S. & Steinweis, A. E. (eds)

For decades, historians have debated how and to what extent the Holocaust penetrated the German national consciousness between 1933 and 1945. How much did “ordinary” Germans know about the subjugation and mass murder of the Jews, when did they know it, and how did they respond collectively and as individuals? This compact volume brings together six historical investigations into the subject from leading scholars employing newly accessible and previously underexploited evidence. Ranging from the roots of popular anti-Semitism to the complex motivations of Germans who hid Jews, these studies illuminate some of the most difficult questions in Holocaust historiography, supplemented with an array of fascinating primary source materials.

Subjects: 20th Century History Jewish Studies
eBook available December 2015
Empire of Pictures

Global Media and the 1960s Remaking of American Foreign Policy

Kunkel, S.

In Cold War historiography, the 1960s are often described as a decade of mounting diplomatic tensions and international social unrest. At the same time, they were a period of global media revolution: communication satellites compressed time and space, television spread around the world, and images circulated through print media in expanding ways. Examining how U.S. policymakers exploited these changes, this book offers groundbreaking international research into the visual media battles that shaped America's Cold War from West Germany and India to Tanzania and Argentina.

Subjects: Media Studies 20th Century History
May 2014
Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany

Wetzell, R. F. (ed)

The history of criminal justice in modern Germany has become a vibrant field of research, as demonstrated in this volume. Following an introductory survey, the twelve chapters examine major topics in the history of crime and criminal justice from Imperial Germany, through the Weimar and Nazi eras, to the early postwar years. These topics include case studies of criminal trials, the development of juvenile justice, and the efforts to reform the penal code, criminal procedure, and the prison system. The collection also reveals that the history of criminal justice has much to contribute to other areas of historical inquiry: it explores the changing relationship of criminal justice to psychiatry and social welfare, analyzes representations of crime and criminal justice in the media and literature, and uses the lens of criminal justice to illuminate German social history, gender history, and the history of sexuality.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available September 2014
Sounds of Modern History

Auditory Cultures in 19th- and 20th-Century Europe

Morat, D. (ed)

Long ignored by scholars in the humanities, sound has just begun to take its place as an important object of study in the last few years. Since the late 19th century, there has been a paradigmatic shift in auditory cultures and practices in European societies. This change was brought about by modern phenomena such as urbanization, industrialization and mechanization, the rise of modern sciences, and of course the emergence of new sound recording and transmission media. This book contributes to our understanding of modern European history through the lens of sound by examining diverse subjects such as performed and recorded music, auditory technologies like the telephone and stethoscope, and the ambient noise of the city.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Media Studies
December 2014
Anti-liberal Europe

A Neglected Story of Europeanization

Gosewinkel, D. (ed)

The history of modern Europe is often presented with the hindsight of present-day European integration, which was a genuinely liberal project based on political and economic freedom. Many other visions for Europe developed in the 20th century, however, were based on an idea of community rooted in pre-modern religious ideas, cultural or ethnic homogeneity, or even in coercion and violence. They frequently rejected the idea of modernity or reinterpreted it in an antiliberal manner. Anti-liberal Europe examines these visions, including those of anti-modernist Catholics, conservatives, extreme rightists as well as communists, arguing that antiliberal concepts in 20th-century Europe were not the counterpart to, but instead part of the process of European integration.

Subject: 20th Century History
December 2014
Atlantic Automobilism

Emergence and Persistence of the Car, 1895-1940

Mom, G.

Our continued use of the combustion engine car in the 21st century, despite many rational arguments against it, makes it more and more difficult to imagine that transport has a sustainable future. Offering a sweeping transatlantic perspective, this book explains the current obsession with automobiles by delving deep into the motives of early car users. It provides a synthesis of our knowledge about the emergence and persistence of the car, using a broad range of material including novels, poems, films, and songs to unearth the desires that shaped our present “car society.” Combining social, psychological, and structural explanations, the author concludes that the ability of cars to convey transcendental experience, especially for men, explains our attachment to the vehicle.

Subjects: General Mobility Studies 20th Century History
eBook available January 2014
The French Right Between the Wars

Political and Intellectual Movements from Conservatism to Fascism

Kalman, S. & Kennedy, S. (eds)

During the interwar years France experienced severe political polarization. At the time many observers, particularly on the left, feared that the French right had embraced fascism, generating a fierce debate that has engaged scholars for decades, but has also obscured critical changes in French society and culture during the 1920s and 1930s. This collection of essays shifts the focus away from long-standing controversies in order to examine various elements of the French right, from writers to politicians, social workers to street fighters, in their broader social, cultural, and political contexts. It offers a wide-ranging reassessment of the structures, mentalities, and significance of various conservative and extremist organizations, deepening our understanding of French and European history in a troubled yet fascinating era.

Subject: 20th Century History
March 2014
Understanding Multiculturalism

The Habsburg Central European Experience

Feichtinger, J. & Cohen, G. B. (eds)

Multiculturalism has long been linked to calls for tolerance of cultural diversity, but today many observers are subjecting the concept to close scrutiny. After the political upheavals of 1968, the commitment to multiculturalism was perceived as a liberal manifesto, but in the post-9/11 era, it is under attack for its relativizing, particularist, and essentializing implications. The essays in this collection offer a nuanced analysis of the multifaceted cultural experience of Central Europe under the late Habsburg monarchy and beyond. The authors examine how culturally coded social spaces can be described and understood historically without adopting categories formerly employed to justify the definition and separation of groups into nations, ethnicities, or homogeneous cultures. As we consider the issues of multiculturalism today, this volume offers new approaches to understanding multiculturalism in Central Europe freed of the effects of politically exploited concepts of social spaces.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available April 2014
On the Path to Genocide

Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined

Mayersen, D.

Why did the Armenian genocide erupt in Turkey in 1915, only seven years after the Armenian minority achieved civil equality for the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire? How can we explain the Rwandan genocide occurring in 1994, after decades of relative peace and even cooperation between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority? Addressing the question of how the risk of genocide develops over time, On the Path to Genocide contributes to a better understand why genocide occurs when it does. It provides a comprehensive and comparative historical analysis of the factors that led to the 1915 Armenian genocide and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, using fresh sources and perspectives that yield new insights into the history of the Armenian and Rwandan peoples. Finally, it also presents new research into constraints that inhibit genocide, and how they can be utilized to attempt the prevention of genocide in the future.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
eBook available July 2014
The German Right in the Weimar Republic

Studies in the History of German Conservatism, Nationalism, and Antisemitism

Jones, L. E. (ed)

Significant recent research on the German Right between 1918 and 1933 calls into question received narratives of Weimar political history. The German Right in the Weimar Republic examines the role that the German Right played in the destabilization and overthrow of the Weimar Republic, with particular emphasis on the political and organizational history of Rightist groups as well as on the many permutations of right-wing ideology during the period. In particular, antisemitism and the so-called “Jewish Question” played a prominent role in the self-definition and politics of the right-wing groups and ideologies explored by the contributors to this volume.

Subject: 20th Century History
June 2014
Encounters with Modernity

The Catholic Church in West Germany, 1945-1975

Ziemann, B.

During the three decades from 1945 to 1975, the Catholic Church in West Germany employed a broad range of methods from empirical social research. Statistics, opinion polling, and organizational sociology, as well as psychoanalysis and other approaches from the “psy sciences,” were debated and introduced in pastoral care. In adopting these methods for their own work, bishops, parish clergy, and pastoral sociologists tried to open the church up to modernity in a rapidly changing society. In the process, they contributed to the reform agenda of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Through its analysis of the intersections between organized religion and applied social sciences, this award-winning book offers fascinating insights into the trajectory of the Catholic Church in postwar Germany.

Subject: 20th Century History
July 2014
Beyond Alterity

German Encounters with Modern East Asia

Shen, Q. & Rosenstock, M. (eds)

With the economic and political rise of East Asia in the second half of the twentieth century, many Western countries have re-evaluated their links to their Eastern counterparts. Thus, in recent years, Asian German Studies has emerged as a promising branch within interdisciplinary German Studies. This collection of essays examines German-language cultural production pertaining to modern China and Japan, and explicitly challenges orientalist notions by proposing a conception of East and West not as opposites, but as complementary elements of global culture, thereby urging a move beyond national paradigms in cultural studies. Essays focus on the mid-century German-Japanese alliance, Chinese-German Leftist collaborations, global capitalism, travel, identity, and cultural hybridity. The authors include historians and scholars of film and literature, and employ a wide array of approaches from postcolonial, globalization, media, and gender studies. The collection sheds new light on a complex and ambivalentset of international relationships, while also testifying to the potential of Asian German Studies.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 20th Century History
eBook available July 2014
Nationalism and the Cinema in France

Political Mythologies and Film Events, 1945-1995

Frey, H.

It is often taken for granted that French cinema is intimately connected to the nation’s sense of identity and self-confidence. But what do we really know about that relationship? What are the nuances, insider codes, and hidden history of the alignment between cinema and nationalism? Hugo Frey suggests that the concepts of the ‘political myth’ and ‘the film event’ are the essential theoretical reference points for unlocking film history. Nationalism and the Cinema in France offers new arguments regarding those connections in the French case, examining national elitism, neo-colonialism, and other exclusionary discourses, as well as discussing for the first time the subculture of cinema around the extreme right Front National. Key works from directors such as Michel Audiard, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Marcel Pagnol, Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati, François Truffaut, and others provide a rich body of evidence.

Subjects: Film Studies 20th Century History
August 2014
A Revolution of Perception?

Consequences and Echoes of 1968

Gilcher-Holtey, I. (ed)

The year “1968” marked the climax of protests that simultaneously captured most industrialized Western countries. The protesters challenged the institutions of Western democracies, confronting powerful, established parties and groups with an opposing force and public presence that negated traditional structures of institutional authority and criticized the basic assumptions of the post-war order. Exploring the effects the protest movement of 1968 had on the political, social, and symbolic order of the societies they called into question, this volume focuses on the consequences and echoes of 1968 from different perspectives, including history, sociology, and linguistics.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
July 2014
Creating Wilderness

A Transnational History of the Swiss National Park

Kupper, P.

The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. Unlike Yellowstone Park, which embodied close cooperation between state-supported conservation and public recreation, the Swiss park put in place an extraordinarily strong conservation program derived from a close alliance between the state and scientific research. This deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.

Subjects: 20th Century History Environmental Studies
September 2014
A World of Populations

Transnational Perspectives on Demography in the Twentieth Century

Hartmann, H. & Unger, C. R. (eds)

Demographic study and the idea of a “population” was developed and modified over the course of the twentieth century, mirroring the political, social, and cultural situations and aspirations of different societies. This growing field adapted itself to specific policy concerns and was therefore never apolitical, despite the protestations of practitioners that demography was “natural.” Demographics were transformed into public policies that shaped family planning, population growth, medical practice, and environmental conservation. While covering a variety of regions and time periods, the essays in this book share an interest in the transnational dynamics of emerging demographic discourses and practices. Together, they present a global picture of the history of demographic knowledge.

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology
December 2014
Shaping the Transnational Sphere

Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s

Rodogno, D., Struck, B. & Vogel, J. (eds)

In the second half of the nineteenth century a new kind of social and cultural actor came to the fore: the expert. During this period complex processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and nation-building gained pace, particularly in Western Europe and North America. These processes created new forms of specialized expertise that grew in demand and became indispensible in fields like sanitation, incarceration, urban planning, and education. Often the expertise needed stemmed from problems at a local or regional level, but many transcended nation-state borders. Experts helped shape a new transnational sphere by creating communities that crossed borders and languages, sharing knowledge and resources through those new communities, and by participating in special events such as congresses and world fairs.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
November 2014
Property in East Central Europe

Notions, Institutions, and Practices of Landownership in the Twentieth Century

Siegrist, H. & Müller, D. (eds)

Property is a complex phenomenon comprising cultural, social, and legal rules. During the twentieth century, property rights in land suffered massive interference in Central and Eastern Europe. The promise of universal and formally equal rights of land ownership, ensuring predictability of social processes and individual autonomy, was largely not fulfilled. The national appropriation of property in the interwar period and the communist era represent an onerous legacy for the postcommunist (re)construction of a liberal-individualist property regime. However, as the scholars in this collection show, after the demise of communism in Eastern Europe property is again a major factor in shaping individual identity and in providing the political order and culture with a foundational institution. This volume analyzes both historical and contemporary forms of land ownership in Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia in a multidisciplinary framework including economic history, legal and political studies, and social anthropology.

Subject: 20th Century History
June 2013
Routes Into the Abyss

Coping with Crises in the 1930s

Konrad, H. & Maderthaner, W. (eds)

Examining the 1930s and the different reactions to the crisis, this volume offers a global comparative perspective that includes a comparison across time to give insight into the contemporary global recession. Germany, Italy, Austria and Spain with their antidemocratic, authoritarian or fascistic answers to the economic crisis are compared not only to an opposite European perspective – the Swedish example – but also to other global perspectives and their political consequences in Japan, China, India, Turkey, Brazil and the United States. The book offers no recipe for economic, social or political action in today’s recession, but it shows a wide range of reactions in the past, some of which led to catastrophe.

Subject: 20th Century History
October 2013
Against the Grain

Jewish Intellectuals in Hard Times

Mendelsohn†, E., Hoffman, S., & Cohen, R. (eds)

Highlighting the seminal role of German Jewish intellectuals and ideologues in forming and transforming the modern Jewish world, this volume analyzes the political roads taken by German Jewish thinkers; the impact of the Holocaust on the Central and East European Jewish intelligentsia; and the conundrum of modern Jewish identity. Several of German Jewry’s most outstanding figures such as Scholem, Strauss, and Kohn are discussed. Inspired by Steven E. Aschheim’s work, several contributors focus on the fraught relationship between German and East European Jews (the so-called Ostjuden) and between German Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. More generally, this book examines how Central European Jewish thinkers reacted to the terrible crises of the twentieth century—to war, genocide, and the existential threat to the very existence of the Jewish people. It is essential reading for those interested in the triumphs and tragedies of modern European Jewry.

Subjects: Jewish Studies 20th Century History
March 2013
Samizdat, Tamizdat, and Beyond

Transnational Media During and After Socialism

Kind-Kovács, F. & Labov, J. (eds)

In many ways what is identified today as “cultural globalization” in Eastern Europe has its roots in the Cold War phenomena of samizdat (“do-it-yourself” underground publishing) and tamizdat (publishing abroad). This volume offers a new understanding of how information flowed between East and West during the Cold War, as well as the much broader circulation of cultural products instigated and sustained by these practices. By expanding the definitions of samizdat and tamizdat from explicitly political print publications to include other forms and genres, this volume investigates the wider cultural sphere of alternative and semi-official texts, broadcast media, reproductions of visual art and music, and, in the post-1989 period, new media. The underground circulation of uncensored texts in the Cold War era serves as a useful foundation for comparison when looking at current examples of censorship, independent media, and the use of new media in countries like China, Iran, and the former Yugoslavia.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies Media Studies
eBook available March 2013
Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe

Langenbacher, E., Niven, B., & Wittlinger, R. (eds)

The collapse of the Iron Curtain, the renationalization of eastern Europe, and the simultaneous eastward expansion of the European Union have all impacted the way the past is remembered in today’s eastern Europe. At the same time, in recent years, the Europeanization of Holocaust memory and a growing sense of the need to stage a more “self-critical” memory has significantly changed the way in which western Europe commemorates and memorializes the past. The increasing dissatisfaction among scholars with the blanket, undifferentiated use of the term “collective memory” is evolving in new directions. This volume brings the tension into focus while addressing the state of memory theory itself.

Subject: 20th Century History
April 2013
From Fidelity to History

Film Adaptations as Cultural Events in the Twentieth Century

Scholz, A.-M.

Scholarly approaches to the relationship between literature and film, ranging from the traditional focus upon fidelity to more recent issues of intertextuality, all contain a significant blind spot: a lack of theoretical and methodological attention to adaptation as an historical and transnational phenomenon. This book argues for a historically informed approach to American popular culture that reconfigures the classically defined adaptation phenomenon as a form of transnational reception. Focusing on several case studies— including the films Sense and Sensibility (1995) and The Portrait of a Lady (1997), and the classics The Third Man (1949) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)—the author demonstrates the ways adapted literary works function as social and cultural events in history and how these become important sites of cultural negotiation and struggle.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 20th Century History Film Studies
August 2013
Bittersweet Europe

Albanian and Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878-2008

Brisku, A.

From the late nineteenth century to the post-communist period, Albanian and Georgian political and intellectual elites have attributed hopes to “Europe,” yet have also exhibited ambivalent attitudes that do not appear likely to vanish any time soon. Albanians and Georgians have evoked, experienced, and continue to speak of “Europe” according to a tense triadic entity—geopolitics, progress, culture—which has generated aspirations as well as delusions towards it and themselves. This unique dichotomy weaves a nuanced, historical account of a changing Europe, continuously marred by uncertainties that greatly affect these countries’ domestic politics as well as foreign policy decisions. A systematic and rich account of how Albanians and Georgians view Europe, this book offers a fresh perspective on the vast East/West literature and, more broadly, on European intellectual, cultural, and political history.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
September 2013
Trieglaff

Balancing Church and Politics in a Pomeranian World, 1807-1948

Thadden†, R. von

Through the lens of five generations of Thaddens, this book tells the history of Trieglaff, the village and family estate located in what is now western Poland, from Napoleon’s occupation in 1807 to the Red Army’s invasion in 1945 and until the departure of the last Thaddens in 1948. At the center of this history of Trieglaff society, economy, politics, and culture is the von Thadden family, notably, Adolph Ferdinand von Thadden, the head of the pietistic revival in Pomerania, and Reinold von Thadden-Trieglaff, the founder of the German Protestant Kirchentag. It intertwines family history with the political history of Germany through its description of Otto von Bismarck’s close associations with Trieglaff in the 19th century and its deliberation of the execution of Elisabeth von Thadden, arising out of her resistance to the Nazis, in the 20th century. The source material is richly supplemented by family records kept by “Trieglaffers” in America and from correspondence between Pomerania and America. The book examines the lives of individuals as well as socio-economic and cultural structures, depicting the dynamic changes that the village experienced throughout some 150 years of German and European history; it might be called world history in microcosm. As juxtaposition of formal history and remembered history, it is a serious scholarly source as well as an engaging read.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available August 2013
The Mind of the Nation

Völkerpsychologie in Germany, 1851-1955

Klautke, E.

Völkerpsychologie played an important role in establishing the social sciences via the works of such scholars as Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, Ernest Renan, Franz Boas, and Werner Sombart. In Germany, the intellectual history of “folk psychology” was represented by Moritz Lazarus, Heymann Steinthal, Wilhelm Wundt and Willy Hellpach. This book follows the invention of the discipline in the nineteenth century, its rise around the turn of the century and its ultimate demise after the Second World War. In addition, it shows that despite the repudiation of “folk psychology” and its failed institutionalization, the discipline remains relevant as a precursor of contemporary studies of “national identity.”

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available September 2013
The Legacies of a Hawaiian Generation

From Territorial Subject to American Citizen

Schachter, J.

Through the voices and perspectives of the members of an extended Hawaiian family, or `ohana, this book tells the story of North American imperialism in Hawai`i from the Great Depression to the new millennium. The family members offer their versions of being “Native Hawaiian” in an American state, detailing the ways in which US laws, policies, and institutions made, and continue to make, an impact on their daily lives. The book traces the ways that Hawaiian values adapted to changing conditions under a Territorial regime and then after statehood. These conditions involved claims for land for Native Hawaiian Homesteads, education in American public schools, military service, and participation in the Hawaiian cultural renaissance. Based on fieldwork observations, kitchen table conversations, and talk-stories, or mo`olelo, this book is a unique blend of biography, history, and anthropological analysis.

Subjects: General Anthropology General Cultural Studies 20th Century History
November 2013
Alienating Labour

Workers on the Road from Socialism to Capitalism in East Germany and Hungary

Bartha, E.

The Communist Party dictatorships in Hungary and East Germany sought to win over the “masses” with promises of providing for ever-increasing levels of consumption. This policy—successful at the outset—in the long-term proved to be detrimental for the regimes because it shifted working class political consciousness to the right while it effectively excluded leftist alternatives from the public sphere. This book argues that this policy can provide the key to understanding of the collapse of the regimes. It examines the case studies of two large factories, Carl Zeiss Jena (East Germany) and Rába in Győr (Hungary), and demonstrates how the study of the formation of the relationship between the workers’ state and the industrial working class can offer illuminating insights into the important issue of the legitimacy (and its eventual loss) of Communist regimes.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History
eBook available October 2013
Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

German Visions of Europe, 1926-1950

Bailey, C.

An intellectual and cultural history of mid-twentieth century plans for European integration, this book calls into question the usual pre- and post-war periodizations that have structured approaches to twentieth-century European history. It focuses not simply on the ideas of leading politicians but analyses debates about Europe in “civil society” and the party-political sphere in Germany, asking if, and how, a “permissive consensus” was formed around the issue of integration. Taking Germany as its case study, the book offers context to the post-war debates, analysing the continuities that existed between interwar and post-war plans for European integration. It draws attention to the abiding scepticism of democracy displayed by many advocates of integration, indeed suggesting that groups across the ideological spectrum converged around support for European integration as a way of constraining the practice of democracy within nation-states.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available November 2013
Children of the Dictatorship

Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the 'Long 1960s' in Greece

Kornetis, K.

Putting Greece back on the cultural and political map of the “Long 1960s,” this book traces the dissent and activism of anti-regime students during the dictatorship of the Colonels (1967-74). It explores the cultural as well as ideological protest of Greek student activists, illustrating how these “children of the dictatorship” managed to re-appropriate indigenous folk tradition for their “progressive” purposes and how their transnational exchange molded a particular local protest culture. It examines how the students’ social and political practices became a major source of pressure on the Colonels’ regime, finding its apogee in the three day Polytechnic uprising of November 1973 which laid the foundations for a total reshaping of Greek political culture in the following decades.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
December 2013
The Armenian Genocide

Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916

Gust, W. (ed)

In 1915, the Armenians were exiled from their land, and in the process of deportation 1.5 million of them were killed. The 1915-1916 annihilation of the Armenians was the archetype of modern genocide, in which a state adopts a specific scheme geared to the destruction of an identifiable group of its own citizens. Official German diplomatic documents are of great importance in understanding the genocide, as only Germany had the right to report day-by-day in secret code about the ongoing genocide. The motives, methods, and after-effects of the Armenian Genocide echoed strongly in subsequent cases of state-sponsored genocide. Studying the factors that went into the Armenian Genocide not only gives us an understanding of historical genocide, but also provides us with crucial information for the anticipation and possible prevention of future genocides.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
July 2012
Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft and the Dynamics of Racial Exclusion

Violence against Jews in Provincial Germany, 1919–1939

Wildt, M.

In the spring of 1933, German society was deeply divided – in the Reichstag elections on 5 March, only a small percentage voted for Hitler. Yet, once he seized power, his creation of a socially inclusive Volksgemeinschaft, promising equality, economic prosperity and the restoration of honor and pride after the humiliating ending of World War I persuaded many Germans to support him and to shut their eyes to dictatorial coercion, concentration camps, secret state police, and the exclusion of large sections of the population. The author argues however, that the everyday practice of exclusion changed German society itself: bureaucratic discrimination and violent anti-Jewish actions destroyed the civil and constitutional order and transformed the German nation into an aggressive and racist society. Based on rich source material, this book offers one of the most comprehensive accounts of this transformation as it traces continuities and discontinuities and the replacement of a legal order with a violent one, the extent of which may not have been intended by those involved.

Subjects: 20th Century History Genocide Studies
eBook available February 2012
Peter Lorre: Face Maker

Constructing Stardom and Performance in Hollywood and Europe

Thomas, S.

Peter Lorre described himself as merely a ‘face maker’. His own negative attitude also characterizes traditional perspectives which position Lorre as a tragic figure within film history: the promising European artist reduced to a Hollywood gimmick, unable to escape the murderous image of his role in Fritz Lang’s M. This book shows that the life of Peter Lorre cannot be reduced to a series of simplistic oppositions. It reveals that, despite the limitations of his macabre star image, Lorre’s screen performances were highly ambitious, and the terms of his employment were rarely restrictive. Lorre’s career was a complex negotiation between transnational identity, Hollywood filmmaking practices, the ownership of star images and the mechanics of screen performance.

Subjects: Film Studies 20th Century History
eBook available February 2012
Sexual Knowledge

Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900-1934

McEwen, B.

Vienna’s unique intellectual, political, and religious traditions had a powerful impact on the transformation of sexual knowledge in the early twentieth century. Whereas turn-of-the-century sexology, as practiced in Vienna as a medical science, sought to classify and heal individuals, during the interwar years, sexual knowledge was employed by a variety of actors to heal the social body: the truncated, diseased, and impoverished population of the newly created Republic of Austria. Based on rich source material, this book charts cultural changes that are hallmarks of the modern era, such as the rise of the companionate marriage, the role of expert advice in intimate matters, and the body as a source of pleasure and anxiety. These changes are evidence of a dramatic shift in attitudes from a form of scientific inquiry largely practiced by medical specialists to a social reform movement led by and intended for a wider audience that included workers, women, and children.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
April 2012
Myth and Modernity

Barlach's Drawings on the Nibelungen

Paret, P. & Thieme, H.

In interpreting its own age art often turns to the past. At the beginning of the twentieth century one of these encounters between present and past was prompted by the interest a major figure in German modernism, the sculptor Ernst Barlach, came to take in the medieval epic The Song of the Nibelungen. There exists no statement by Barlach to explain what prompted his interest and the resulting sequence of large drawings on the epic’s climactic final segment, reproduced here. In conception and execution these drawings stand out in Barlach’s graphic oeuvre, as they stand apart from the multitude of interpretations the Nibelungen inspired in art, literature, and music. This book discusses the epic and its course through German history, the artist’s biography and the course of his work, as well as the place the drawings occupy in the art, culture, and politics of Germany in the 1920s and 30s and beyond to the ideological and political crises of Central Europe before and after the First World War.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
August 2012
Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements

The Revolutionary Power of Ordinary Men and Women

Stutje, J. W. (ed)

Much of the writing on charisma focuses on specific traits associated with exceptional leaders, a practice that has broadened the concept of charisma to such an extent that it loses its distinctiveness – and therefore its utility. More particularly, the concept’s relevance to the study of social movements has not moved beyond generalizations. The contributors to this volume renew the debate on charismatic leadership from a historical perspective and seek to illuminate the concept’s relevance to the study of social movements. The case studies here include such leaders as Mahatma Gandhi; the architect of apartheid, Daniel F. Malan; the heroine of the Spanish Civil War, Dolores Ibarruri (la pasionaria); and Mao Zedong. These charismatic leaders were not just professional politicians or administrators, but sustained a strong symbiotic relationship with their followers, one that stimulated devotion to the leader and created a real group identity.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available June 2012
Journeys Into Madness

Mapping Mental Illness in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Blackshaw, G. & Wieber, S. (eds)

At the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud’s investigation of the mind represented a particular journey into mental illness, but it was not the only exploration of this ‘territory’ in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Sanatoriums were the new tourism destinations, psychiatrists were collecting art works produced by patients and writers were developing innovative literary techniques to convey a character’s interior life. This collection of essays uses the framework of journeys in order to highlight the diverse artistic, cultural and medical responses to a peculiarly Viennese anxiety about the madness of modern times. The travellers of these journeys vary from patients to doctors, artists to writers, architects to composers and royalty to tourists; in engaging with their histories, the contributors reveal the different ways in which madness was experienced and represented in ‘Vienna 1900’.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
eBook available April 2012
Maternalism Reconsidered

Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century

Klein, M. van der, Plant, R. J., Sanders, Nichole, & Weintrob L. R. (eds)

Beginning in the late 19th century, competing ideas about motherhood had a profound impact on the development and implementation of social welfare policies. Calls for programmes aimed at assisting and directing mothers emanated from all quarters of the globe, advanced by states and voluntary organizations, liberals and conservatives, feminists and anti-feminists – a phenomenon that scholars have since termed ‘maternalism’. This volume reassesses maternalism by providing critical reflections on prior usages of the concept, and by expanding its meaning to encompass geographical areas, political regimes and cultural concerns that scholars have rarely addressed. From Argentina, Brazil and Mexico City to France, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Ukraine, the United States and Canada, these case studies offer fresh theoretical and historical perspectives within a transnational and comparative framework. As a whole, the volume demonstrates how maternalist ideologies have been employed by state actors, reformers and poor clients, with myriad political and social ramifications.

Subjects: 20th Century History Gender Studies
July 2012
Changing Perceptions of the Public Sphere

Emden, C. J. & Midgley, D. (eds)

Initially propounded by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in 1962 in order to describe the realm of social discourse between the state on one hand, and the private sphere of the market and the family on the other, the concept of a bourgeois public sphere quickly became a central point of reference in the humanities and social sciences. This volume reassesses the validity and reach of Habermas’s concept beyond political theory by exploring concrete literary and cultural manifestations in early modern and modern Europe. The contributors ask whether, and in what forms, a social formation that rightfully can be called the “public sphere” really existed at particular historical junctures, and consider the senses in which the “public sphere” should rather be replaced by a multitude of interacting cultural and social “publics.” This volume offers insights into the current status of the “public sphere” within the disciplinary formation of the humanities and social sciences at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
December 2012
Culture in Dark Times

Nazi Fascism, Inner Emigration, and Exile

Hermand, J.

BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS—THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles—fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically “great German culture,” as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about “culture” were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
eBook available August 2011
The Legacies of Two World Wars

European Societies in the Twentieth Century

Kettenacker, L. & Riotte, T. (eds)

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was done mainly, if one is to believe US policy at the time, to liberate the people of Iraq from an oppressive dictator. However, the many protests in London, New York, and other cities imply that the policy of “making the world safe for democracy” was not shared by millions of people in many Western countries. Thinking about this controversy inspired the present volume, which takes a closer look at how society responded to the outbreaks and conclusions of the First and Second World Wars. In order to examine this relationship between the conduct of wars and public opinion, leading scholars trace the moods and attitudes of the people of four Western countries (Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy) before, during and after the crucial moments of the two major conflicts of the twentieth century. Focusing less on politics and more on how people experienced the wars, this volume shows how the distinction between enthusiasm for war and concern about its consequences is rarely clear-cut.

Subjects: 20th Century History WWI History WWII History
April 2011
The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany

Sutton, K.

Throughout the Weimar period the so-called “masculinization of woman” was much more than merely an outsider or subcultural phenomenon; it was central to representations of the changing female ideal, and fed into wider debates concerning the health and fertility of the German “race” following the rupture of war. Drawing on recent developments within the history of sexuality, this book sheds new light on representations and discussions of the masculine woman within the Weimar print media from 1918–1933. It traces the connotations and controversies surrounding this figure from her rise to media prominence in the early 1920s until the beginning of the Nazi period, considering questions of race, class, sexuality, and geography. By focusing on styles, bodies and identities that did not conform to societal norms of binary gender or heterosexuality, this book contributes to our understanding of gendered lives and experiences at this pivotal juncture in German history.

Subjects: Gender Studies 20th Century History
June 2011
France in the Age of Organization

Factory, Home and Nation from the 1920s to Vichy

Clarke, J.

In interwar France, there was a growing sense that ‘organization’ was the solution to the nation’s perceived social, economic and political ills. This book examines the roots of this idea in the industrial rationalization movement and its manifestations in areas as diverse as domestic organization and economic planning. In doing so, it shows how experts in fields ranging from engineering to the biological sciences shaped visions of a rational socio-economic order from the 1920s to Vichy and beyond.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available October 2011
Vienna Is Different

Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin-de-Siècle to the Present

Herzog, H. H.

Assessing the impact of fin-de-siècle Jewish culture on subsequent developments in literature and culture, this book is the first to consider the historical trajectory of Austrian-Jewish writing across the 20th century. It examines how Vienna, the city that stood at the center of Jewish life in the Austrian Empire and later the Austrian nation, assumed a special significance in the imaginations of Jewish writers as a space and an idea. The author focuses on the special relationship between Austrian-Jewish writers and the city to reveal a century-long pattern of living in tension with the city, experiencing simultaneously acceptance and exclusion, feeling “unheimlich heimisch” (eerily at home) in Vienna.

Subjects: Jewish Studies 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
eBook available August 2011
State and Minorities in Communist East Germany

Dennis, M. & LaPorte, N.

Based on interviews and the voluminous materials in the archives of the SED, the Stasi and central and regional authorities, this volume focuses on several contrasting minorities (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, ‘guest’ workers from Vietnam and Mozambique, football fans, punks, and skinheads) and their interaction with state and party bodies during Erich Honecker’s rule over the communist system. It explores how they were able to resist persecution and surveillance by instruments of the state, thus illustrating the limits on the power of the East German dictatorship and shedding light on the notion of authority as social practice.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available February 2010
Rhodes Scholars, Oxford, and the Creation of an American Elite

Schaeper, T. & Schaeper, K.

Each year thirty-two seniors at American universities are awarded Rhodes Scholarships, which entitle them to spend two or three years studying at the University of Oxford. The program, founded by the British colonialist and entrepreneur Cecil Rhodes and established in 1903, has become the world's most famous academic scholarship and has brought thousands of young Americans to study in England. Many of these later became national leaders in government, law, education, literature, and other fields. Among them were the politicians J. William Fulbright, Bill Bradley, and Bill Clinton; the public policy analysts Robert Reich and George Stephanopoulos; the writer Robert Penn Warren; the entertainer Kris Kristofferson; and the Supreme Court Justices Byron White and David Souter.

Based on extensive research in published and unpublished documents and on hundreds of interviews, this book traces the history of the program and the stories of many individuals. In addition it addresses a host of questions such as: how important was the Oxford experience for the individual scholars? To what extent has the program created an old-boy (-girl since 1976) network that propels its members to success? How many Rhodes Scholars have cracked under the strain and failed to live up to expectations? How have the Americans coped with life in Oxford and what have they thought of Britain in general? Beyond the history of the program and the individuals involved, this book also offers a valuable examination of the American-British cultural encounter.

Subjects: Educational Studies 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
eBook available September 2010
Raising Citizens in the 'Century of the Child'

The United States and German Central Europe in Comparative Perspective

Schumann, D. (ed)

The 20th century, declared at its start to be the “Century of the Child” by Swedish author Ellen Key, saw an unprecedented expansion of state activity in and expert knowledge on child-rearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Children were seen as a crucial national resource whose care could not be left to families alone. However, the exact scope and degree of state intervention and expert influence as well as the rights and roles of mothers and fathers remained subjects of heated debates throughout the century. While there is a growing scholarly interest in the history of childhood, research in the field remains focused on national narratives. This volume compares the impact of state intervention and expert influence on theories and practices of raising children in the U.S. and German Central Europe. In particular, the contributors focus on institutions such as kindergartens and schools where the private and the public spheres intersected, on notions of “race” and “ethnicity,” “normality” and “deviance,” and on the impact of wars and changes in political regimes.

Subjects: 20th Century History Educational Studies
April 2010
Diamonds and War

State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine

De Vries, D.

The mining of diamonds, their trading mechanisms, their financial institutions, and, not least, their cultural expressions as luxury items have engaged the work of historians, economists, social scientists, and international relations experts. Based on previously unexamined historical documents found in archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States, this book is the first in English to tell the story of the formation of one of the world’s main strongholds of diamond production and trade in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The history of the diamond-cutting industry, characterized by a long-standing Jewish presence, is discussed as a social history embedded in the international political economy of its times; the genesis of the industry in Palestine is placed on a broad continuum within the geographic and economic dislocations of Dutch, Belgian, and German diamond-cutting centers. In providing a micro-historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the story of the diamond industry in Mandate Palestine proposes a more nuanced picture of the uncritical approach to the strict boundaries of ethnic-based occupational communities. This book unravels the Middle-eastern pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital and recasts this craft culture’s inseparability from international politics during a period of war and transformation of empire.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History
January 2010
The Paradoxical Republic

Austria 1945-2005

Rathkolb, O.

Austria, a small-state society with barely eight million inhabitants differs from the rest of Europe in that it displays various paradoxical developments in its political culture, social life, and economy. First, most Austrians are the descendents of immigrants from all parts of the Habsburg Monarchy due to intensive migration occurring before 1913. Yet contemporary election campaigns and domestic and international politics have been dominated by xenophobic anti-migration slogans, especially since 1989. Without migration, the country’s population would be in serious decline. Second, the Austrians have profited enormously from EU membership and EU enlargement but are stubbornly opposed to EU institutions, and there is little evidence of any EU hyphenated identities. Last, attitudes to historical events are equally contradictory: even though up to 600,000 Austrians were members of the Nazi Party, often holding prominent positions (Adolf Hitler himself), the German Reich has been regarded as solely responsible for the Holocaust. These and a number of other paradoxical perceptions are explored and interpreted in this fascinating and wide-ranging work by one of Austria’s leading historians.

Subject: 20th Century History
April 2010
Forging Political Identity

Silk and Metal Workers in Lyon, France 1900-1939

Mann, K.

Escaping the traditional focus on Paris, the author examines the divergent political identities of two occupational groups in Lyon, metal and silk workers, who, despite having lived and worked in the same city, developed different patterns of political practices and bore distinct political identities. This book also examines in detail the way that gender relations influenced industrial change, skill, and political identity. Combining empirical data collected in French archives with social science theory and methods, this study argues that political identities were shaped by the intersection of the prevailing political climate with the social relations surrounding work in specific industrial settings.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History
eBook available August 2010
Weimar Publics/Weimar Subjects

Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s

Canning, K., Barndt, K. & McGuire, K. (eds)

In spite of having been short-lived, “Weimar” has never lost its fascination. Until recently the Weimar Republic’s place in German history was primarily defined by its catastrophic beginning and end - Germany’s defeat in 1918 and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933; its history seen mainly in terms of politics and as an arena of flawed decisions and failed compromises. However, a flourishing of interdisciplinary scholarship on Weimar political culture is uncovering arenas of conflict and change that had not been studied closely before, such as gender, body politics, masculinity, citizenship, empire and borderlands, visual culture, popular culture and consumption. This collection offers new perspectives from leading scholars in the disciplines of history, art history, film studies, and German studies on the vibrant political culture of Germany in the 1920s. From the traumatic ruptures of defeat, revolution, and collapse of the Kaiser’s state, the visionaries of Weimar went on to invent a republic, calling forth new citizens and cultural innovations that shaped the republic far beyond the realms of parliaments and political parties.

Subjects: 20th Century History Gender Studies
October 2010
New Dangerous Liaisons

Discourses on Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century

Passerini, L., Ellena, L., & Geppert, A. (eds)

In Europe, love has been given a prominent place in European self-representations from the Enlightenment onwards. The category of love, stemming from private and personal spheres, was given a public function and used to distinguish European civilisation from others. Contributors to this volume trace historical links and analyse specific connections between the two discourses on love and Europe over the course of the twentieth century, exploring the distinctions made between the public and private, the political and personal. In doing so, this volume develops an innovative historiography that includes such resources as autobiographies, love letters, and cinematic representations, and takes issue with the exclusivity of Eurocentrism. Its contributors put forth hypotheses about the historical pre-eminence of emotions and consider this history as a basis for a non-Eurocentric understanding of new possible European identities.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
eBook available December 2010
Popular Historiographies in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Cultural Meanings, Social Practices

Paletschek, S. (ed)

Popular presentations of history have recently been discovered as a new field of research, and even though interest in it has been growing noticeably very little has been published on this topic. This volume is one of the first to open up this new area of historical research, introducing some of the work that has emerged in Germany over the past few years. While mainly focusing on Germany (though not exclusively), the authors analyze different forms of popular historiographies and popular presentations of history since 1800 and the interrelation between popular and academic historiography, exploring in particular popular histories in different media and popular historiography as part of memory culture.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
April 2009
The Reluctant Revolutionary

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Collision with Prusso-German History

Moses, J. A.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a uniquely reluctant and distinctly German Lutheran revolutionary. In this volume, the author, an Anglican priest and historian, argues that Bonhoeffer’s powerful critique of Germany’s moral derailment needs to be understood as the expression of a devout Lutheran Protestant. Bonhoeffer gradually recognized the ways in which the intellectual and religious traditions of his own class - the Bildungsbürgertum - were enabling Nazi evil. In response, he offered a religiously inspired call to political opposition and Christian witness—which cost him his life. The author investigates Bonhoeffer’s stance in terms of his confrontation with the legacy of Hegelianism and Neo-Rankeanism, and by highlighting Bonhoeffer’s intellectual and spiritual journey, shows how his endeavor to politicially reeducate the German people must be examined in theological terms.

Subject: 20th Century History
September 2009
The Radical Right in Switzerland

Continuity and Change, 1945-2000

Skenderovic, D.

There has been a tendency amongst scholars to view Switzerland as a unique case, and comparative scholarship on the radical right has therefore shown little interest in the country. Yet, as the author convincingly argues, there is little justification for maintaining the notion of Swiss exceptionalism, and excluding the Swiss radical right from cross-national research. His book presents the first comprehensive study of the development of the radical right in Switzerland since the end of the Second World War and therefore fills a significant gap in our knowledge. It examines the role that parties and political entrepreneurs of the populist right, intellectuals and publications of the New Right, as well as propagandists and militant groups of the extreme right assume in Swiss politics and society. The author shows that post-war Switzerland has had an electorally and discursively important radical right since the 1960s that has exhibited continuity and persistence in its organizations and activities. Recently, this has resulted in the consolidation of a diverse Swiss radical right that is now established at various levels within the political and public arena.

Subject: 20th Century History
March 2009
Political Violence in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933

Fight for the Streets and Fear of Civil War

Schumann, D.

The Prussian province of Saxony—where the Communist uprising of March 1921 took place and two Combat Leagues (Wehrverbände) were founded (the right-wing Stahlhelm and the Social Democratic Reichsbanner) - is widely recognized as a politically important region in this period of German history. Using a case study of this socially diverse province, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of political violence in Weimar Germany with particular emphasis on the political culture from which it emerged. It refutes both the claim that the Bolshevik revolution was the prime cause of violence, and the argument that the First World War’s all-encompassing “brutalization” doomed post-1918 German political life from the very beginning. The study thus contributes to a view of the Weimar Republic as a state in severe crisis but with alternatives to the Nazi takeover.

Subject: 20th Century History
April 2009
Crime Stories

Criminalistic Fantasy and the Culture of Crisis in Weimar Germany

Herzog, T.

The Weimar Republic (1918–1933) was a crucial moment not only in German history but also in the history of both crime fiction and criminal science. This study approaches the period from a unique perspective - investigating the most notorious criminals of the time and the public’s reaction to their crimes. The author argues that the development of a new type of crime fiction during this period - which turned literary tradition on its head by focusing on the criminal and abandoning faith in the powers of the rational detective - is intricately related to new ways of understanding criminality among professionals in the fields of law, criminology, and police science. Considering Weimar Germany not only as a culture in crisis (the standard view in both popular and scholarly studies), but also as a culture of crisis, the author explores the ways in which crime and crisis became the foundation of the Republic’s self-definition. An interdisciplinary cultural studies project, this book insightfully combines history, sociology, literary studies, and film studies to investigate a topic that cuts across all of these disciplines.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
eBook available April 2009
Weimar Radicals

Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance

Brown, T. S.

Exploring the gray zone of infiltration and subversion in which the Nazi and Communist parties sought to influence and undermine each other, this book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between two defining ideologies of the twentieth century. The struggle between Fascism and Communism is situated within a broader conversation among right- and left-wing publicists, across the Youth Movement and in the “National Bolshevik” scene, thus revealing the existence of a discourse on revolutionary legitimacy fought according to a set of common assumptions about the qualities of the ideal revolutionary. Highlighting the importance of a masculine-militarist politics of youth revolt operative in both Marxist and anti-Marxist guises, Weimar Radicals forces us to re-think the fateful relationship between the two great ideological competitors of the Weimar Republic, while offering a challenging new interpretation of the distinctive radicalism of the interwar era.

Subject: 20th Century History
March 2009
The Return of Jazz

Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change

Wright Hurley, A.

Jazz has had a peculiar and fascinating history in Germany. The influential but controversial German writer, broadcaster, and record producer, Joachim-Ernst Berendt (1922–2000), author of the world’s best-selling jazz book, labored to legitimize jazz in West Germany after its ideological renunciation during the Nazi era. German musicians began, in a highly productive way, to question their all-too-eager adoption of American culture and how they sought to make valid artistic statements reflecting their identity as Europeans. This book explores the significance of some of Berendt’s most important writings and record productions. Particular attention is given to the “Jazz Meets the World” encounters that he engineered with musicians from Japan, Tunisia, Brazil, Indonesia, and India. This proto-“world music” demonstrates how some West Germans went about creating a post-nationalist identity after the Third Reich. Berendt’s powerful role as the West German “Jazz Pope” is explored, as is the groundswell of criticism directed at him in the wake of 1968.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies Performance Studies 20th Century History
August 2009
Supervision and Authority in Industry

Western European Experiences, 1830-1939

Eeckhout, P. Van den (ed)

The number of studies discussing the labour relationship under industrial capitalism is overwhelming, but the literature on labour and its concrete, day-today shop-floor practices is much less abundant. How and by whom workers were supervised is one of the neglected aspects in the history of labour relations. After an insightful introductory chapter discussing the different forms of supervision in the United States, Britain, France and Germany before the First World War, the case studies in this volume focus on foremen: vital, but largely unstudied figures in the history of factory life, labour relations and management. Illustrating the multiple faces of the foreman, the contributors examine the artisanal sector, textiles, mining, printing, engineering, heavy manufacturing and car industries in Western Europe and show that the foreman was a multifaceted character who possessed technical expertise in addition to educational and organizational qualities. This comprehensive volume is further enhanced by comparisons with practices of supervision in Russia, Japan, China and India.

Subjects: Economic History 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available August 2009
Voyage Through the Twentieth Century

A Historian's Recollections and Reflections

Klemperer, K. von

The account of the author’s life, spent between Europe and America, is at the same time an account of his generation, one that came of age between the two World Wars. Recalling not only circumstances of his own situation but that of his friends, the author shows how this generation faced a reality that seemed fragmented, and in their shared thirst for knowledge and commitment to ideas they searched for cohesiveness among the glittering, holistic ideologies and movements of the twenties and thirties. The author’s scholarly work on the German Resistance to Hitler revealed to him those who maintained dignity and courage in times of peril and despair, which became for him a life’s pursuit. This work is unique in its thorough inclusion of the postwar decades and its perspective from a historian eager to rescue the “other” Germany—the Germany of the righteous rather than the Holocaust murderers.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available November 2009
Immigration Policy in the Federal Republic of Germany

Negotiating Membership and Remaking the Nation

Klusmeyer, D. & Papademetriou, D.

German migration policy now stands at a major crossroad, caught between a fifty-year history of missed opportunities and serious new challenges. Focusing on these new challenges that German policy makers face, the authors, both internationally recognized in this field, use historical argument, theoretical analysis, and empirical evaluation to advance a more nuanced understanding of recent initiatives and the implications of these initiatives. Their approach combines both synthesis and original research in a presentation that is not only accessible to the general educated reader but also addresses the concerns of academic scholars and policy analysts. This important volume offers a comprehensive and critical examination of the history of German migration law and policy from the Federal Republic’s inception in 1949 to the present.

Subjects: 20th Century History Refugee & Migration Studies
eBook available April 2008
The Fateful Alliance

German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933: The Machtergreifung in a New Light

Beck, H.

On 30 January 1933, Alfred Hugenberg's conservative German National People's Party (DNVP) formed a coalition government with the Nazi Party, thus enabling Hitler to accede to the chancellorship. This book analyzes in detail the complicated relationship between Conservatives and Nazis and offers a re-interpretation of the Nazi seizure of power - the decisive months between 30 January and 14 July 1933. The Machtergreifung is characterized here as a period of all-pervasive violence and lawlessness with incessant conflicts between Nazis and German Nationals and Nazi attacks on the conservative Bürgertum, a far cry from the traditional depiction of the takeover as a relatively bloodless, virtually sterile assumption of power by one vast impersonal apparatus wresting control from another. The author scrutinizes the revolutionary character of the Nazi seizure of power, the Nazis' attacks on the conservative Bürgertum and its values, and National Socialism's co-optation of conservative symbols of state power to serve radically new goals, while addressing the issue of why the DNVP was complicit in this and paradoxically participated in eroding the foundations of its very own principles and bases of support.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available August 2008
Destination London

German-Speaking Emigrés and British Cinema, 1925-1950

Bergfelder, T. & Cargnelli, C. (eds)

The legacy of emigrés in the British film industry, from the silent film era until after the Second World War, has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature. Destination London is the first book to redress this imbalance. Focusing on areas such as exile, genre, technological transfer, professional training and education, cross-cultural exchange and representation, it begins by mapping the reasons for this neglect before examining the contributions made to British cinema by emigré directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, set designers, and composers. It goes on to assess the cultural and economic contexts of transnational industry collaborations in the 1920s, artistic cosmopolitanism in the 1930s, and anti-Nazi propaganda in the 1940s.

Subjects: Film Studies Refugee & Migration Studies 20th Century History
eBook available July 2008
Between Mass Death and Individual Loss

The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany

Confino, A., Betts, P. & Schumann, D. (eds)

Recent years have witnessed growing scholarly interest in the history of death. Increasing academic attention toward death as a historical subject in its own right is very much linked to its pre-eminent place in 20th-century history, and Germany, predictably, occupies a special place in these inquiries. This collection of essays explores how German mourning changed over the 20th century in different contexts, with a particular view to how death was linked to larger issues of social order and cultural self-understanding. It contributes to a history of death in 20th-century Germany that does not begin and end with the Third Reich.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
January 2008
A Social History of Spanish Labour

New Perspectives on Class, Politics, and Gender

Piqueras, J., & Sanz Rozalén, V. (eds)

Focusing on organization, resistance and political culture, this collection represents some of the best examples of recent Spanish historiography in the field of modern Spanish labor movements. Topics range from socialism to anarchism, from the formation of the liberal state in the 19th century to the Civil War, and from women in the work place to the fate of the unions under Franco.

Subjects: Economic History 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available May 2007
Conflicted Memories

Europeanizing Contemporary Histories

Jarausch, K. H. & Lindenberger, T. (eds)

Despite the growing interest in general European history, the European dimension is surprisingly absent from the writing of contemporary history. In most countries, the historiography on the 20th century continues to be dominated by national perspectives. Although there is cross-national work on specific topics such as occupation or resistance, transnational conceptions and narratives of contemporary European history have yet to be worked out. This volume focuses on the development of a shared conception of recent European history that will be required as an underpinning for further economic and political integration so as to make lasting cooperation on the old continent possible. It tries to overcome the traditional national framing that ironically persists just at a time when organized efforts to transform Europe from an object of debate to an actual subject have some chance of succeeding in making it into a polity in its own right.

Subject: 20th Century History
March 2007
Continental Britons

German-Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany

Berghahn, M.

Based on numerous in-depth and personal interviews with members of three generations, this is the first comprehensive study of German-Jewish refugees who came to England in the 1930s. The author addresses questions such as perceptions of Germany and Britain and attitudes towards Judaism. On the basis of many case studies, the author shows how the refugees adjusted, often amazingly successfully, to their situation in Britain. While exploring the process of acculturation of the German-Jews in Britain, the author challenges received ideas about the process of Jewish assimilation in general, and that of the Jews in Germany in particular, and offers a new interpretation in the light of her own empirical data and of current anthropological theory.

Subjects: Jewish Studies Refugee & Migration Studies 20th Century History Sociology
July 2007
Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity

Essays on Modern German History

Biess, F., Roseman, M. & Schissler, H. (eds)

Bringing together some of the most prominent contemporary historians of modern Germany alongside innovative newcomers to the field, this volume offers new perspectives on key debates surrounding Germany’s descent into, and emergence from, the Nazi catastrophe. It explores the intersections between society, economy, and international policy, with a particular interest in the relations between elites and the wider society, and provides new insights into the complex continuities and discontinuities of modern German history. This volume offers a rich selection of essays that contribute to our understanding of the road to war, Nazism, and the Holocaust, as well as Germany’s transformation after 1945.

Subject: 20th Century History
January 2007
The Power of Entrepreneurs

Politics and Economy in Contemporary Spain

Cabrera, M. & del Rey, F.

Although Spain is an important member of the EU, relatively little is known about its economy and its interrelationship with political forces. This book, the first of its kind, offers a long-term view and analyzes this ever-changing relationship throughout the 20th century with its various upheavals such as the crisis of the democratic republic and the civil war in the 1930s, the long General Franco dictatorship from the 1940s until the 1970s and the subsequent transition to democracy. From the detailed studies of individual cases, specific companies as well as entrepreneurial organizations, a very diverse picture emerges, contradicting widespread simplistic interpretations of politico-economic linkages, which demonstrates both the pluralism of the economic interests as well as the complexity of their relationship to the political class.

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology
April 2007
Restitution and Memory

Material Restoration in Europe

Diner, D. & Wunberg, G. (eds)

The myriad debates on restitution and memory, which have been going on in Europe for decades, indicate that World War II never ended. It is still very much with us, paradoxically re-invoked by the events of 1989/90 and the expansion of Europe to the east in the aftermath of the collapse of communism and economic globalization. The growing privatization and reprivatization in Eastern Europe revive pre-war memories that lay buried under the blanket of collectivization and nationalization of property after 1945. World War II did not only result in the death and destruction on a large scale but also in an a far-reaching revolution of existing property relations. This volume offers an assessment of the problematic of restitution and its close interconnection with the discourses of memory that have recently emerged.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available August 2007
Gendering Modern German History

Rewriting Historiography

Hagemann, K. & Quataert, J. H. (eds)

Writing on the history of German women has - like women's history elsewhere - undergone remarkable expansion and change since it began in the late 1960s. Today Women's history still continues to flourish alongside gender history but the focus of research has increasingly shifted from women to gender. This shift has made it possible to make men and masculinity objects of historical research too. After more than thirty years of research, it is time for a critical stocktaking of the "gendering" of the historiography on nineteenth and twentieth century Germany. To provide a critical overview in a comparative German-American perspective is the main aim of this volume, which brings together leading experts from both sides of the Atlantic. They discuss in their essays the state of historiography and reflect on problems of theory and methodology. Through compelling case studies, focusing on the nation and nationalism, military and war, colonialism, politics and protest, class and citizenship, religion, Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, the Holocaust, the body and sexuality and the family, this volume demonstrates the extraordinary power of the gender perspective to challenge existing interpretations and rewrite mainstream arguments.

Subjects: Gender Studies 20th Century History
eBook available November 2007
Women Migrants From East to West

Gender, Mobility and Belonging in Contemporary Europe

Passerini, L., Lyon, D., Capussotti, E. & Laliotou, I. (eds)

Based on the oral histories of eighty migrant women and thirty additional interviews with ‘native’ women in the ‘receiving’ countries, this volume documents the contemporary phenomenon of the feminisation of migration through an exploration of the lives of women, who have moved from Bulgaria and Hungary to Italy and the Netherlands. It assumes migrants to be active subjects, creating possibilities and taking decisions in their own lives, as well as being subject to legal and political regulation, and the book analyses the new forms of subjectivity that come about through mobility.

Part I is a largely conceptual exploration of subjectivity, mobility and gender in Europe. The chapters in Part II focus on love, work, home, communication, and food, themes which emerged from the migrant women’s accounts. In Part III, based on the interviews with ‘native’ women – employers, friends, or in associations relevant to migrant women – the chapters analyse their representations of migrants, and the book goes on to explore forms of intersubjectivity between European women of different cultural origins. A major contribution of this book is to consider how the movement of people across Europe is changing the cultural and social landscape with implications for how we think about what Europe means.

Cover image: Painting by Carla Accardi. Reproduced with the kind permission of Luca Barsi of the Galleria Accademia, Via Accademia Albertina 3/e, 10123 Torino.

Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies Gender Studies General Mobility Studies 20th Century History
June 2007
Portraits of Hope

Armenians in the Contemporary World

Voss, Huberta von (ed)

Elie Wiesel called the genocide of the Armenians during the First World War ‘the Holocaust before the Holocaust’. Around one and a half million Armenians - men, women and children – were slaughtered at the time of the First World War. This book outlines some of the historical facts and consequences of the massacres but sees it as its main objective to present the Armenians to the foreign reader, their history but also their lives and achievements in the present that finds most Armenians dispersed throughout the world. 3000 years after their appearance in history, 1700 years after adopting Christianity and almost 90 years after the greatest catastrophe in their history, these 50 ‘biographical sketches of intellectuals, artists, journalists, and others…produce a complicated kaleidoscope of a divided but lively people that is trying once again, to rediscover its ethnic coherence. Armenian civilization does not consist solely of stories about a far-off past, but also of traditions and a national conscience suggestive of a future that will transcend the present.’ [from the Preface]

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
December 2007
Changing Cultural Tastes

Writers and the Popular in Modern Germany

Waine, A.

Changing Cultural Tastes offers a critical survey of the taste wars fought over the past two centuries between the intellectual establishment and the common people in Germany. It charts the uneasy relationship of high and popular culture in Germany in the modern era. The impact of National Socialism and the strong influence from Great Britain and the United States are assessed in this cultural history of a changing nation and society. The period 1920-1980 is given special prominence, and the work of significant writers and artists such as Josef von Sternberg and Bertolt Brecht, Elfriede Jelinek and Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Erwin Piscator and Heinrich Böll, is closely analysed. Their work has reflected changing tastes and, crucially, helped to make taste more pluralistic and democratic.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 20th Century History
February 2007
Driving Germany

The Landscape of the German Autobahn, 1930-1970

Zeller, T.

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Hitler's autobahn was more than just the pet project of an infrastructure-friendly dictator. It was supposed to revolutionize the transportation sector in Germany, connect the metropoles with the countryside, and encourage motorization. The propaganda machinery of the Third Reich turned the autobahn into a hyped-up icon of the dictatorship. One of the claims was that the roads would reconcile nature and technology. Rather than destroying the environment, they would embellish the landscape. Many historians have taken this claim at face value and concluded that the Nazi regime harbored an inbred love of nature. In this book, the author argues that such conclusions are misleading. Based on rich archival research, the book provides the first scholarly account of the landscape of the autobahn.

Subjects: Environmental Studies 20th Century History General Mobility Studies
November 2007
Journeys Through Fascism

Italian Travel-Writing between the Wars

Burdett, C.

During the twenty years of Mussolini’s rule a huge number of travel texts were written of journeys made during the interwar period to the sacred sites of Fascist Italy, Mussolini’s newly conquered African empire, Spain during the Civil War, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and the America of the New Deal. Examining these observations by writers and journalists, the author throws new light on the evolving ideology of Fascism, how it was experienced and propagated by prominent figures of the time; how the regime created a utopian vision of the Roman past and the imperial future; and how it interpreted the attractions and dangers of other totalitarian cultures.

The book helps gain a better understanding of the evolving concepts of imperialism, which were at the heart of Italian Fascism, and thus shows that travel writing can offer an important contribution to historical analysis.

Subject: 20th Century History
January 2007
Anarchism, Revolution and Reaction

Catalan Labor and the Crisis of the Spanish State, 1898-1923

Smith, A.

The period from 1898 to 1923 was a particularly dramatic one in Spanish history; it culminated in the violent Barcelona “labor wars” and was only brought to a close with the coup d’état launched by the Barcelona Captain General, Miguel Primo de Rivera, in September 1923. In his detailed examination of the rise of the Catalan anarchist-syndicalist-led labor movement, the author blends social, cultural and political history in a novel way. He analyses the working class “from below” and the policies of the Spanish State towards labor “from above.” Based on an in-depth usage of primary sources, the authors provides an unrivalled account of Catalan labor and the Catalan anarchist-syndicalist movement and thus makes an important contribution to our understanding of early twentieth-century Spanish history.

Subject: 20th Century History
eBook available November 2007
The Limits of Loyalty

Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy

Cole, L. & Unowsky, D. (eds)

The overwhelming majority of historical work on the late Habsburg Monarchy has focused primarily on national movements and ethnic conflicts, with the result that too little attention has been devoted to the state and ruling dynasty. This volume is the first of its kind to concentrate on attempts by the imperial government to generate a dynastic-oriented state patriotism in the multinational Habsburg Monarchy. It examines those forces in state and society which tended toward the promotion of state unity and loyalty towards the ruling house. These essays, all original contributions and written by an international group of historians, provide a critical examination of the phenomenon of “dynastic patriotism” and offer a richly nuanced treatment of the multinational empire in its final phase.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
December 2007
Cultures of Abortion in Weimar Germany

Usborne, C.

Abortion in the Weimar Republic is a compelling subject since it provoked public debates and campaigns of an intensity rarely matched elsewhere. It proved so explosive because populationist, ecclesiastical and political concerns were heightened by cultural anxieties of a modernity in crisis. Based on an exceptionally rich source material (e.g., criminal court cases, doctors’ case books, personal diaries, feature films, plays and literary works), this study explores different attitudes and experiences of those women who sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and those who helped or hindered them. It analyzes the dichotomy between medical theory and practice, and questions common assumptions, i.e. that abortion was “a necessary evil,” which needed strict regulation and medical control; or that all back-street abortions were dangerous and bad. Above all, the book reveals women’s own voices, frequently contradictory and ambiguous: having internalized medical ideas they often also adhered to older notions of reproduction which opposed scientific approaches.

Subjects: 20th Century History Gender Studies
December 2007
Between Tradition and Modernity

Aby Warburg and the Public Purposes of Art in Hamburg

Russell, M. A.

Aby Warburg (1866-1929), founder of the Warburg Institute, was one of the most influential cultural historians of the twentieth century. Focusing on the period 1896-1918, this is the first in-depth, book-length study of his response to German political, social and cultural modernism. It analyses Warburg's response to the effects of these phenomena through a study of his involvement with the creation of some of the most important public artworks in Germany. Using a wide array of archival sources, including many of his unpublished working papers and much of his correspondence, the author demonstrates that Warburg's thinking on contemporary art was the product of two important influences: his engagement with Hamburg's civic affairs and his affinity with influential reform movements seeking a greater role for the middle classes in the political, social and cultural leadership of the nation. Thus a lively picture of Hamburg’s cultural life emerges as it responded to artistic modernism, animated by private initiative and public discourse, and charged with debate.

Subject: 20th Century History
May 2006
Between Bombs and Good Intentions

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Italo-Ethiopian war, 1935-1936

Baudendistel, R.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted again the precarious situation aid agencies find themselves in, caught as they are between the firing lines of the hostile parties, as they are trying to alleviate the plight of the civilian populations. This book offers an illuminating case study from a previous conflict, the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-36, and of the humanitarian operation of the Red Cross during this period. Based on fresh material from Red Cross and Italian military archives, the author examines highly controversial subjects such as the Italian bombings of Red Cross field hospitals, the treatment of Prisoners of War by the two belligerents; and the effects of Fascist Italy’s massive use of poison gas against the Ethiopians. He shows how Mussolini and his ruthless regime, throughout the seven-month war, manipulated the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – the lead organization of the Red Cross in times of war, helped by the surprising political naïveté of its board. During this war the ICRC redefined its role in a debate, which is fascinating not least because of its relevance to current events, about the nature of humanitarian action. The organization decided to concern itself exclusively with matters falling under the Geneva Conventions and to give priority to bringing relief over expressing protest. It was a decision that should have far-reaching consequences, particularly for the period of World War II and the fate of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.

Subject: 20th Century History
March 2006
Germans No More

Accounts of Jewish Everyday Life, 1933-1938

Limberg, M. & Rübsaat, H. (eds)

Most books on Nazi Germany focus on the war years. Much less is known about the preceding years although these give important clues with regard to the events after November 1938, which culminated in the Holocaust. This book is based on eyewitness accounts chosen from the many memoirs that Harvard University received in 1940 after it had sent out a call to German-Jewish refugees to describe their experiences before and after 1933. These invaluable documents became part of the Harvard archives where the editors of this volume discovered them fifty years later. These memoirs, written so soon after the emigration when the impressions were still vivid, movingly describe the gradual deterioration of the situation of the Jews, the daily humiliations and insults they had to suffer, and their desperate attempts to leave Germany. An informative introduction puts these accounts into a wider framework.

Subjects: 20th Century History Jewish Studies
January 2006
A Stranger in Paris

Germany's Role in Republican France, 1870-1940

Mitchell†, A.

In this compact and tightly argued essay, the author maintains that the French Third Republic - and European history during this period in general - can only be understood if particular attention is paid to the special relationship that existed between France and Germany. The experience of the French people was so intimately related to that of its closest neighbor that a bilateral perspective becomes unavoidable. Without the unifying theme of Germany's crucial role in acting upon and within the French Republic, this story would become a much more random tale of events. After 1870, an autonomous national history of France is no longer possible.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
eBook available October 2006
Two Lives in Uncertain Times

Facing the Challenges of the 20th Century as Scholars and Citizens

Iggers, W., & Iggers†, G.

Published in Association with the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Wilma and Georg Iggers came from different backgrounds, Wilma from a Jewish farming family from the German-speaking border area of Czechoslovakia, Georg from a Jewish business family from Hamburg. They both escaped with their parents from Nazi persecution to North America where they met as students. As a newly married couple they went to the American South where they taught in two historic Black colleges and were involved in the civil rights movement. In 1961 they began going to West Germany regularly not only to do research but also to further reconciliation between Jews and Germans, while at the same time in their scholarly work contributing to a critical confrontation with the German past. After overcoming first apprehensions, they soon felt Göttingen to be their second home, while maintaining their close involvements in America. After 1966 they frequently visited East Germany and Czechslovakia in an attempt to build bridges in the midst of the Cold War.

The book relates their very different experiences of childhood and adolescence and then their lives together over almost six decades during which they endeavored to combine their roles as parents and scholars with their social and political engagements. In many ways this is not merely a dual biography but a history of changing conditions in America and Central Europe during turbulent times.

Subject: 20th Century History
February 2006
Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire

The Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822-1920

Quataert, D.

The story of the miners of Zonguldak presents a particularly graphic local lens through which to examine questions that have been of major concern to historians—most prominently, the development of the state, the emergence of capitalism, and the role of the working classes in these large processes. This book examines such major issues through the actual experiences of coal miners in the Ottoman Empire. The encounters of mine workers with state mining officials and private mine operators do not follow the expected patterns of labor-state-capital relations as predicted by the major explanatory paradigms of modernization or dependency. Indeed, as the author clearly shows, few of the outcomes are as predicted. The fate of these miners has much to offer both Ottoman and Middle East specialists as well as scholars of the developing world and, more generally, those interested in the connections between economic development and social and political change.

Subjects: Economic History 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
August 2006
The Price of Exclusion

Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1898-1933

Kurlander, E.

Erratum: The publisher deeply regrets a file error in the printed index, which has resulted in the replacement of note notations (n) with en dashes. The corrected file can be downloaded here.

“The failure of Liberalism” in Germany and its responsibility for the rise of Nazism has been widely discussed among scholars inside and outside Germany. This author argues that German liberalism failed because of the irreconcilable conflict between two competing visions of German identity. In following the German liberal parties from the Empire through the Third Reich Kurlander illustrates convincingly how an exclusionary racist Weltanschauung, conditioned by profound transformations in German political culture at large, gradually displaced the liberal-universalist conception of a democratic Rechtsstaat. Although there were some notable exceptions, this widespread obsession with „racial community [Volksgemeinschaft]“ caused the liberal parties to succumb to ideological lassitude and self-contradiction, paving the way for National Socialism.

Subject: 20th Century History
May 2005
Critical Junctions

Anthropology and History beyond the Cultural Turn

Kalb, D. & Tak, H. (eds)

The “cultural turn” has been a multifarious and pervasive phenomenon in Western universities and modes of social knowledge since the early 1980s.

This volume focuses on the conjunction of two disciplines where both the analytic promises as well as the difficulties involved in the meeting of humanist and social science approaches soon became obvious. Anthropologists and historians have come together here in order to recapture, elaborate, and criticize pre-Cultural Turn and non-Cultural Turn modes of analysing structures of experience, feeling, subjectivity and action in human societies and to highlight the still unexploited possibilities developed among others in the work of scholars such as Norbert Elias, Max Gluckman, Eric Wolf, E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams.

Subjects: Theory & Methodology in Anthropology 20th Century History
eBook available January 2005
German Scholars and Ethnic Cleansing, 1919-1945

Haar, I. & Fahlbusch, M. (eds)

Recently, there has been a major shift in the focus of historical research on World War II towards the study of the involvements of scholars and academic institutions in the crimes of the Third Reich. The roots of this involvement go back to the 1920s. At that time right-wing scholars participated in the movement to revise the Versailles Treaty and to create a new German national identity. The contribution of geopolitics to this development is notorious. But there were also the disciplines of history, geography, ethnography, art history, archeology, sociology, and demography that devised a new nationalist ideology and propaganda. Its scholars established an extensive network of personal and institutional contacts. This volume deals with these scholars and their agendas. They provided the Nazi regime with ideas of territorial expansion, colonial exploitation and racist exclusion culminating in the Holocaust. Apart from developing ideas and concepts, scholars also actively worked in the SS and Wehrmacht when Hitler began to implement its criminal policies in World War II.

This collection of original essays, written by the foremost European scholars in this field, describes key figures and key programs supporting the expansion and exploitation of the Third Reich. In particular, they analyze the historical, geographic, ethnographical and ethno-political ideas behind the ethnic cleansing and looting of cultural treasures.

Subjects: Genocide Studies 20th Century History
eBook available December 2005
Between Marx and Coca-Cola

Youth Cultures in Changing European Societies, 1960-1980

Schildt, A. & Siegfried, D. (eds)

In the 1960s and 1970s, Western Europe's "Golden Age" (Eric Hobsbawm), a new youth consciousness emerged, which gave this period its distinctive character. Offering rich and new material, this volume moves beyond the easy conflation of youth culture and "Americanization" and instead sets out to show, for the first time, how international developments fused with national traditions to produce specific youth cultures that became the leading trendsetters of emergent post-industrial Western societies. It presents a multi-faceted portrait of European youth cultures, colored by differences in gender, class, and education, and points out the tension between emerging consumerism and growing politicisation, succinctly expressed by Jean-Luc Godard in his 1967 pairing of "Marx and Coca-Cola."

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
April 2005
The Nation, Europe, and the World

Textbooks and Curricula in Transition

Schissler, H. & Soysal, Y.N. (eds)

Textbooks in history, geography and the social sciences provide important insights into the ways in which nation-states project themselves. Based on case studies of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Turkey Bulgaria, Russia, and the United States, this volume shows the role that concepts of space and time play in the narration of ‘our country’ and the wider world in which it is located. It explores ways in which in western European countries the nation is reinterpreted through European lenses to replace national approaches in the writing of history. On the other hand, in an effort to overcome Eurocentric views,’world history’ has gained prominence in the United States. Yet again, East European countries, coming recently out of a transnational political union, have their own issues with the concept of nation to contend with. These recent developments in the field of textbooks and curricula open up new and fascinating perspectives on the changing patterns of the re-positioning process of nation-states in West as well as Eastern Europe and the United States in an age of growing importance of transnational organizations and globalization.

Subjects: Educational Studies 20th Century History
July 2005
Thinking Utopia

Steps into Other Worlds

Rüsen, J., Fehr, M. & Rieger, T. W. (eds)

After the breakdown of socialist and communist systems in the East, it had become fashionable to declare the so-called "end of utopia" ("end of history," "end of narratives"). The authors of this volume do not share this view but think that it is time to rehabilitate utopian thought. The political concept of Utopia that has given its name to these transcendental projections onto the world has been too narrow to describe and analyze the moving forces of the mind perceiving human existence beyond reality. By broadening the perspectives of utopian studies, these essays enable the reader to reconstruct scholarly paradigms and strategies of utopian, complex and holistic thinking in modern cosmology, philosophy, sociology, in literary, historical and political sciences, and to compare traditions and ways of Western utopian thought to the practice in the East.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
April 2005
Revolution and Counterrevolution

Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory

Murphy, K.

Why did the most unruly proletariat of the Twentieth Century come to tolerate the ascendancy of a political and economic system that, by every conceivable measure, proved antagonistic to working-class interests? Revolution and Counterrevolution is at the center of the ongoing discussion about class identities, the Russian Revolution, and early Soviet industrial relations. Based on exhaustive research in four factory-specific archives, it is unquestionably the most thorough investigation to date on working-class life during the revolutionary era. Focusing on class conflict and workers' frequently changing response to management and state labor policies, the study also meticulously reconstructs everyday life: from leisure activities to domestic issues, the changing role of women, and popular religious belief. Its unparalleled immersion in an exceptional variety of sources at the factory level and its direct engagement with the major interpretive questions about the formation of the Stalinist system will force scholars to re-evaluate long-held assumptions about early Soviet society.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History
January 2005
The Crisis of the German Left

The PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy

Thompson, P.

Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian and critical history, the author examines the historical and theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989 and looks at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the successor party to the East German Communists). He contends that the Stalinization of the GDR itself was the product not just of the Cold War but of a longer inter-systemic struggle between the competing primacies of politics and economics and that the end of the GDR has to be seen as a consequence of the global collapse of the social imperative under the pressure of the re-emergence of the market-state since the mid-1970s. The PDS is therefore stuck in dilemma in which any attempt to "arrive in the Federal Republic" (Brie) is criticized as a readiness to accept the dominance of the market over society whereas any attempt to prioritize social imperatives over the market is attacked as a form of unreconstructed Stalinism. The book offers some suggestions as to how to escape from this dilemma by returning to the critical rather than monumentalist and antiquarian traditions of the workers’ movement.

Subject: 20th Century History
May 2004
The European Way

European Societies in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Kaelble, H. (ed)

A good social history of Europe has yet to be written though, given the developments over the last few decades, this seems more urgent than ever before. This volume presents an important step forward in that it brings together eight internationally known social historians from Europe and Israel, each of whom offer an overview of some key themes in European history during the last two centuries. While dealing with the great changes of this period, the authors reveal the commonalities that link European societies together but also important differences at a national level.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
February 2004
Remembering Karelia

A Family's Story of Displacement during and after the Finnish Wars

Armstrong†, K.

In June 1944, after two wars with the Soviet Union, the Finnish region of Karelia was ceded to the Soviet Union. As a result, the Finnish population of Karelia, nearly 11% of the Finnish population, was moved across the new border. The war years, the loss of territory, the resettlement of the Karelian population, and the reparations that had to be paid to the Allied Forces, were experiences shared by most people living in Finland between 1939 and the late 1950s. Using a family's memoirs, the author shows how these traumatic events affected people in all spheres of their lives and also how they coped physically and emotionally.

Subjects: General Anthropology 20th Century History
November 2004
The Inverted Mirror

Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898-1914

Nolan, M. E.

It is hard to imagine nowadays that, for many years, France and Germany considered each other as "arch enemies." And yet, for well over a century, these two countries waged verbal and ultimately violent wars against each other. This study explores a particularly virulent phase during which each of these two nations projected certain assumptions about national character onto the other - distorted images, motivated by antipathy, fear, and envy, which contributed to the growing hostility between the two countries in the years before the First World War. Most remarkably, as the author discovered, the qualities each country ascribed to its chief adversary appeared to be exaggerated or negative versions of precisely those qualities that it perceived to be lacking or inadequate in itself. Moreover, banishing undesirable traits and projecting them onto another people was also an essential step in the consolidation of national identity. As such, it established a pattern that has become all too familiar to students of nationalism and xenophobia in recent decades. This study shows that antagonism between states is not a fact of nature but socially constructed.

Subject: 20th Century History
June 2004
Sartre Against Stalinism

Birchall, I. H.

Most critics of the political evolution of Jean-Paul Sartre have laid emphasis on his allegedly sympathetic and uncritical attitude to Stalinist Communism due, to a large extent, to their equation of Marxism with Stalinism. It is true that Sartre was guilty of many serious misjudgements with regard to the USSR and the French Communist Party. But his relationship with the Marxist Left was much more complex and co tradictory than most accounts admit. This book offers a political defence of Sartre and shows how, from a relatively apolitical stance in the 1930s, Sartre became increasingly involved in the politics of the Left; though he always distrusted Stalinism, he was sometimes driven to ally himself with it because of the force of its argument.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
November 2004
Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe

Judson, P. & Rozenblit, M. (eds)

The hundred years between the revolutions of 1848 and the population transfers of the mid-twentieth century saw the nationalization of culturally complex societies in East Central Europe. This fact has variously been explained in terms of modernization, state building and nation-building theories, each of which treats the process of nationalization as something inexorable, a necessary component of modernity. Although more recently social scientists gesture to the contingencies that may shape these larger developments, this structural approach makes scholars far less attentive to the “hard work” (ideological, political, social) undertaken by individuals and groups at every level of society who tried themselves to build “national” societies. The essays in this volume make us aware of how complex, multi-dimensional and often contradictory this nationalization process in East Central Europe actually was. The authors document attempts and failures by nationalist politicians, organizations, activists and regimes from 1848 through 1948 to give East-Central Europeans a strong sense of national self-identification. They remind us that only the use of dictatorial powers in the 20th century could actually transform the fantasy of nationalization into a reality, albeit a brutal one.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
November 2004
The Creation of the Modern German Army

General Walther Reinhardt and the Weimar Republic, 1914-1930

Mulligan, W.

Civil-military relations have been a consistent theme of the history of the Weimar Republic. This study focuses on the career of General Walther Reinhardt, the last Prussian Minister of War and the First Head of the Army Command in the Weimar Republic. Though less well known than his great rival, Hans von Seeckt, Reinhardt's role in forming the young Reichswehr and his writings on warfare made him one of the most important and influential military figures in interwar Germany. Contrary to the conventional view that civil-military relations were fraught from the outset, the author argues, Reinhardt's contribution to the military politics of the Weimar Republic shows that opportunities for reform and co-operation with civilian leaders existed. However, although he is primarily seen as a liberal General, this study demonstrates that he was motivated by professional military considerations and by the specter of a future war. His ideas on modern warfare were amongst the most radical of the time.

Subject: 20th Century History
May 2003
Crossing the Aegean

An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey

Hirschon, R. (ed)

Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist Turkish forces, the 1923 Lausanne Convention specified the first internationally ratified compulsory population exchange. It proved to be a watershed in the eastern Mediterranean, having far-reaching ramifications both for the new Turkish Republic, and for Greece which hadto absorb over a million refugees. Known as the Asia Minor Catastrophe by the Greeks, it marked the establishment of the independent nation state for the Turks. The consequences of this event have received surprisingly little attention despite the considerable relevance for the contemporary situation in the Balkans. This volume addresses the challenge of writing history from both sides of the Aegean and provides, for the first time, a forum for multidisciplinary dialogue across national boundaries.

Subjects: Refugee & Migration Studies 20th Century History
eBook available December 2003
Death of the Father

An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority

Borneman, J. (ed)

The death of authority figures like fathers or leaders can be experienced as either liberation or loss. In the twentieth century, the authority of the father and of the leader became closely intertwined; constraints and affective attachments intensified in ways that had major effects on the organization of regimes of authority. This comparative volume examines the resulting crisis in symbolic identification, the national traumas that had crystallized around four state political forms: Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and East European Communism. The defeat of Imperial and Fascist regimes in 1945 and the implosion of Communist regimes in 1989 were critical moments of rupture, of "death of the father." What was the experience of their ends, and what is the reconstruction of those ends in memory?

This volume represents is the beginning of a comparative social anthropology of caesurae: the end of traumatic political regimes, of their symbolic forms, political consequences, and probable futures.

Subjects: General Anthropology 20th Century History
February 2003
The Journalism of Milena Jesenská

A Critical Voice in Interwar Central Europe

Hayes, K. (ed)

Milena Jesenská, born in Prague in 1896, is most famous as one of Franz Kafka's great loves. Although their relationship lasted only a short time, it won the attention of the literary world with the 1952 publication of Kafka's letters to Milena. Her own letters did not survive. Later biographies showed her as a fascinating personality in her own right. In the Czech Republic, she is remembered as one of the most prominent journalists of the interwar period and as a brave one: in 1939 she was arrested for her work in the resistance after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and died in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.

It is estimated that Jesenská wrote well over 1,000 articles but only a handful have been translated into English. In this book her own writings provide a new perspective on her personality, as well as the changes in Central Europe between the two world wars as these were perceived by a woman of letters. The articles in this volume cover a wide range of topics, including her perceptions of Kafka, her understanding of social and cultural changes during this period, the threat of Nazism, and the plight of the Jews in the 1930s.

Subjects: Gender Studies General Cultural Studies Jewish Studies 20th Century History
June 2003
The Spirit of the Berlin Republic

Dettke, D. (ed)

The "Berlin Republic" has become the key concept of post-Cold War Germany and as such has been widely discussed inside as well as outside Germany. Symbolized by the move of the government from Bonn to Berlin it signals all the tangible and intangible changes in Germany's position in the world that have taken place during the 1990s. Well known German authors, decision-makers, and cultural leaders as well as internationally renowned experts on German affairs contribute to this volume, examining various aspects of the New Germany and its old/new capital, such as history, foreign policy, art, architecture, and culture. In this way, the reader gains a varied but comprehensive picture of Germany after unification as perceived by its neighbors, friends, and allies.

Subject: 20th Century History
August 2002
Memory and Amnesia

The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy

Aguilar, P.

Using a rich variety of sources such as official newsreels, school textbooks, the work of contemporary historians, memoirs, official documents, legislation, and monuments, this book explores how the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) influenced the transition to democracy in Spain after Franco's death in 1975. The author traces the development of official discourse on the War throughout the Franco period and describes the régime's attempts to achieve political legitimacy. Although there was no universal consensus regarding the events of the Civil War, general agreement did exist concerning the main lesson which should be drawn from it: never again should Spaniards become embroiled in a fratricidal conflict.

Subject: 20th Century History
February 2002
Crisis and Renewal in France, 1918-1962

Mouré, K. & Alexander, M. S. (eds)

Since 1914, the French state has faced a succession of daunting and at times almost insurmountable crises. The turbulent decades from 1914 to 1969 witnessed near-defeat in 1914, economic and political crisis in 1926, radical political polarization in the 1930s, military conquest in 1940, the deep division of France during the Nazi Occupation, political reconstruction after 1944, de-colonization (with threatening civil war provoked by the Algerian crisis), and dramatic postwar modernization. However, this tumultuous period was not marked just by crises but also by tremendous change. Economic, social and political "modernization" transformed France in the twentieth century, restoring its confidence and its influence as a leader in global economic and political affairs. This combination of crises and renewal has received surprisingly little attention in recent years.

The present collection show-cases significant new scholarship, reflecting greater access to French archival sources, and focuses on the role of crises in fostering modernization in areas covering politics, economics, women, diplomacy and war.

Subject: 20th Century History
December 2002
Culture and Crisis

The Case of Germany and Sweden

Witoszek, N. & Trägårdh, L. (eds)

It is often argued that Germany and Scandinavia stand at two opposite ends of a spectrum with regard to their response to social-economic disruptions and cultural challenges. Though, in many respects, they have a shared cultural inheritance, it is nevertheless the case that they mobilize different mythologies and different modes of coping when faced with breakdown and disorder. The authors argue that it is at these "critical junctures," points of crisis and innovation in the life of communities, that the tradition and identity of national and local communities are formed, polarized, and revalued; it is here that social change takes a particular direction.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 20th Century History
December 2002
Cultural Encounters

European Travel Writing in the 1930s

Burdett, C. & Duncan, D. (eds)

The 1930s were one of the most important decades in defining the history of the twentieth century. It saw the rise of right-wing nationalism, the challenge to established democracies and the full force of imperialist aggression. Cultural Encounters makes an important contribution to our understanding of the ideological and cultural forces which were active in defining notions of national identity in the 1930s. By examining the work of writers and journalists from a range of European countries who used the medium of travel writing to articulate perceptions of their own and other cultures, the book gives a comprehensive account of the complex intellectual climate of the 1930s.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 20th Century History
February 2002
Policy Concertation and Social Partnership in Western Europe

Lessons for the Twenty-first Century

Berger, S. & Compston, H. (eds)

Policy concertation - the determination of public policy by means of agreements struck between governments, employers and trade unions - continues to thrive in Western Europe despite the impact of liberalizing trends that were expected to lead to its demise.

This volume brings together a team of 23 experts with the aim to undertake paired historical and political studies of policy concertation in ten West European countries, which were then subjected to systematic comparative analysis. It shows that overall the incidence of broad policy concertation in Western Europe can be explained by the changing configurations of just three variables.

Subject: 20th Century History
June 2002
Class and Other Identities

Gender, Religion, and Ethnicity in the Writing of European Labour History

Voss, L. Heerma van & Linden, M. van der (eds)

With the onset of a more conservative political climate in the 1980s, social and especially labour history saw a decline in the popularity that they had enjoyed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. This led to much debate on its future and function within the historical discipline as a whole. Some critics declared it dead altogether. Others have proposed a change of direction and a more or less exclusive focus on images and texts. The most constructive proposals have suggested that labour history in the past concentrated too much on class and that other identities of working people should be taken into account to a larger extent than they had been previously, such as gender, religion, and ethnicity. Although class as a social category is still as valid as it has been before, the questions now to be asked are to what extent non-class identities shape working people's lives and mentalities and how these are linked with the class system. In this volume some of the leading European historians of labour and the working classes address these questions. Two non-European scholars comment on their findings from an Indian, resp. American, point of view. The volume is rounded off by a most useful bibliography of recent studies in European labour history, class, gender, religion, and ethnicity.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History Gender Studies
December 2002
Rebellious Families

Household Strategies and Collective Action in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Kok, J. (ed)

Why do people rebel? This is one of the most important questions historians and social scientists have been grappling with over the years. It is a question to which no satisfactory answer has been found, despite more than a century of research. However, in most cases the research has focused on what people do if they rebel but hardly ever, why they rebel.

The essays in this volume offer an alternative perspective, based on the question at what point families decided to add collective action to their repertoires of survival strategies, In this way this volume opens up a promising new field of historical research: the intersection of labour and family history. The authors offer fascinating case studies in several countries spanning over four continents during the last two centuries. In an extensive introduction the relevant literature on households and collective action is discussed, and the volume is rounded off by a conclusion that provides methodological and theoretical suggestions for the further exploration of this new field in social history.

Subjects: Economic History 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
July 2002
The Politics of Education

Teachers and School Reform in Weimar Germany

Lamberti, M.

Although the early history of progressive education is often associated with John Dewey in America, the author argues convincingly that the pedagogues in the elementary schools in the big cities of Imperial Germany were in the avant garde of this movement on the European Continent. Far more than a history of ideas, this study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the culture wars over the schools in Germany in the 1920s. Going up to the Nazi seizure of power, the author's narrative sheds new light on the courageous defense of the republican state by the progressive educators in the 1930s and the relationship between the traditionalists' opposition to school reform and the attraction of certain sections of the teaching profession to the Nazi movement.

Subjects: Educational Studies 20th Century History
February 2001
Alien Policy in Belgium, 1840-1940

The Creation of Guest Workers, Refugees and Illegal Aliens

Caestecker, F.

Belgium has a unique place in the history of migration in that it was the first among industrialized nations in Continental Europe to develop into an immigrant society. In the nineteenth century Italians, Jews, Poles, Czechs, and North Africans settled in Belgium to work in industry and commerce. They were followed by Russians in the 1920s and Germans in the 1930s who were seeking a safe haven from persecution by totalitarian regimes. In the nineteenth century immigrants were to a larger extent integrated into Belgian society: they were denied political rights but participated on equal terms with Belgians in social life. This changed radically in the twentieth century; by 1940 the rights of aliens were severely curtailed, while those of Belgian citizens, in particular in the social domain, were extended. While the state evolved into a "welfare state" for its citizens it became more of a police state for immigrants. The state only tolerated immigrants who were prepared to carry out those jobs that were shunned by the Belgians. Under the pressure of public opinion, an exception was made in the cases of thousands of Jewish refugees that had fled from Nazi Germany. However, other immigrants were subjected to harsh regulations and in fact became the outcasts of twentieth-century Belgian liberal society.

This remarkable study examines in depth and over a long time span how (anti-) alien policies were transformed, resulting in an illiberal exclusion of foreigners at the same time as democratization and the welfare state expanded. In this respect Belgium is certainly not unique but offers an interesting case study of developments that are characteristic for Europe as a whole.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
January 2001
Ethnic Conflict and Indoctrination

Altruism and Identity in Evolutionary Perspectives

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. & Salter, F. (eds)

Violent ethno-nationalist conflicts continue to mar the history of the current century, yet no satisfactory answer to the question of why humans are susceptible to indoctrination by ideologies that lead to inter-group hostility has so far been found. In this volume an international team of leading scientists from many different fields approach this complex issue from a biological perspective, treating indoctrinability as a predisposition that has its roots in humanity's evolutionary past.

Subject: 20th Century History
October 2001
Remembering a Vanished World

A Jewish Childhood in Interwar Poland

Hamerow†, T.

Theodore Hamerow, a prominent historian, was born in Warsaw in 1920 and spent his childhood in Poland and Germany. His parents were members of the best-known Yiddish theater ensemble, the Vilna Company. They were part of an important movement in the Jewish community of Eastern Europe which sought, during the half century before World War II, to create a secular Jewish culture, the vehicle of which would be the Yiddish language.

Combining the skills of an experienced historian with the talents of a natural writer, the author not only brings this exciting part of Jewish culture to life but also deals with ethnic relations and ethnic tensions in the region and addresses the broad political and cultural issues of a society on the verge of destruction. Thus a vivid image emerges that captures the feel and atmosphere of a world that has vanished forever.

Subjects: Jewish Studies 20th Century History
December 2001
Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation

American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early 20th Century

Heideking, J., Fabre, G. & Dreisbach, K. (eds)

Arising out of the context of the re-configuration of Europe, new perspectives are applied by the authors of this volume to the process of nation-building in the United States. By focusing on a variety of public celebrations and festivities from the Revolution to the early twentieth century, the formative period of American national identity, the authors reveal the complex interrelationships between collective identities on the local, regional, and national level which, over time, shaped the peculiar character of American nationalism.

This volume combines vivid descriptions of various public celebrations with a sophisticated methodological and theoretical approach.

Subject: 20th Century History
October 2001
Rethinking Vienna 1900

Beller, S. (ed)

Fin-de-siècle Vienna remains a central event in the birth of the century's modern culture. Our understanding of what happened in those key decades in Central Europe at the turn of the century has been shaped in the last years by an historiography presided over by Carl Schorske's Fin de Siècle Vienna and the model of the relationship between politics and culture which emerged from his work and that of his followers. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to question the main paradigm of this school, i.e. the "failure of liberalism."

This volume reflects not only a whole range of the critiques but also offers alternative ways of understanding the subject, most notably though the concept of "critical modernism" and the integration of previously neglected aspects such as the role of marginality, of the market and the larger Central and European context. As a result this volume offers novel ideas on a subject that is of unending fascination and never fails to captivate the Western imagination.

Subject: 20th Century History
January 2001
Poems in Steel

National Socialism and the Politics of Inventing from Weimar to Bonn

Gispen, K.

The role of National Socialism in the development of German society remains a central question of historical inquiry. This study presents original answers by examining the politics of inventing, a crucial but long ignored problem at the intersection of the history of technology, legal, political, and business history. The analysis of conflicts over the rights of inventors and the meaning of inventing from the 1920s to the 1950s reveals a deep chasm, reaching back to the late nineteenth century, between the forces of capital and big business on one hand and the exponents of intellectual capital - inventors, engineers, industrial scientists - on the other.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
October 2000
Patterns of Provocation

Police and Public Disorder

Bessel, R. & Emsley, C. (eds)

Over the past thirty years social scientists and particularly social historians have stressed the need to take popular protest seriously. The corollary of this, the need to take the policing of protest seriously, seems to have been less well acknowledged. The aim of this volume is to redress this situation by probing, in depth, a limited number of incidents of public disorder and focusing particularly on the role of the police. In doing so, this collection will draw out general patterns of police provocation and public responses and suggest general hypotheses. The incidents explored range across Europe and the United States, involve different kinds of political regime, and are drawn from both the interwar and the postwar years. They pose important questions about the effects of riot training and specialist equipment for the police, about the reality and roles of "agitators" and of "rotten apples" amongst the police, and about the role of the media and the courts in fostering certain kinds of undesirable and counterproductive police behavior.

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology
March 2000
Rural Property and Economy in Post-communist Albania

Lemel. H. W. (ed)

For nearly half a century, Albania had been one of the most isolated and enigmatic countries in the world, where the confiscation of private property was more thoroughly accomplished than anywhere else in Europe. In an abrupt and radical turnaround beginning in 1991, the bulk of the country's land and assets were distributed to its citizens. This book explores issues and challenges emerging in this new context, focusing specifically on rural areas, and examines the question of how secure current landholders seem to be about their property and what this implies for future investment and land market prospects. What does emerge quite clearly from the author's findings is the important role of historical and regional factors in the economic activities of the rural population. The volume is particularly concerned with some key challenges resulting from the new farm property structure, including land fragmentation, formal credit access, and intra-family property rights issues. This in-depth study at the micro level leads to the conclusion that, in Albania's case, privatization of property does certainly not have the far-reaching salutary effects that western reformers had expected.

Contributors: H. Lemel, R. Wheeler, S. Lastarria-Cornhiel, P. Bloch, A. Dubali.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History Sociology
September 2000
The Great Train Race

Railways and the Franco-German Rivalry, 1815-1914

Mitchell†, A.

From their origins, railways produced an intense competition between the two major continental systems in France and Germany. Fitting a new technology into existing political institutions and social habits, these two nations became inexorably involved in industrial and commercial rivalry that eventually escalated into the armed conflict of 1914. Based on many years of research in French and German archives, this study examines the adaptation of railroads and steam engines from Britain to the continent of Europe after the Napoleonic age. A fascinating example of how the same technology, borrowed at the same time from the same source, was assimilated differently by the two continental powers, this book offers a groundbreaking analysis of the crossroads of technology and politics during the first Industrial Revolution.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History
November 2000
Preserving Order Amid Chaos

The Survival of Schools in Uganda, 1971-1986

Paige, J.

To say that education in Africa is under stress is all to obvious. News reports from that continent seem to describe only war and violence, poverty and malnutrition, corruption and mismanagement, or natural disasters that destroy or threaten already frail infrastructures - most news from Africa is bad news. When an education system survives in a country like Uganda, long subjected to the whims of despotic leadership, it warrants an investigation. This book tells the story of four senior secondary schools during a time of war and intractable social conflict, examining a complex topic through multiple perspectives such as documentary history, oral history, ethnography, and organization theory. The author develops a broad picture of the Amin/Obote years and the accompanying political and social chaos in Uganda, while at the same time filling in the crucial details essential for developing an understanding of school survival in the Kaborole District.

The author's intensive field work gives this study a unique dimension: by preserving a record of African voices - students, teachers, parents, alumni, board members, community leaders - a rich tableau of theh local conditions for school survival emerges. At the same time the discussion is situated within the larger Ugandan historical and political context, thus offering an excellent example of the application of multiple research perspectives to a complex social, cultural and political setting.

Subjects: Educational Studies 20th Century History
November 2000
France At War in the Twentieth Century

Propaganda, Myth, and Metaphor

Holman, V. & Kelly, D. (eds)

France experienced four major conflicts in the fifty years between 1914 and 1964: two world wars, and the wars in Indochina and Algeria. In each the role of myth was intricately bound up with memory, hope, belief, and ideas of nation. This is the first book to explore how individual myths were created, sustained, and used for purposes of propaganda, examining in detail not just the press, radio, photographs, posters, films, and songs that gave credence to an imagined event or attributed mythical status to an individual, but also the cultural processes by which such artifacts were disseminated and took effect.

Reliance on myth, so the authors argue, is shown to be one of the most significant and durable features of 20th century warfare propaganda, used by both sides in all the conflicts covered in this book. However, its effective and useful role in time of war notwithstanding, it does distort a population's perception of reality and therefore often results in defeat: the myth-making that began as a means of sustaining belief in France's supremacy, and later her will and ability to resist, ultimately proved counterproductive in the process of decolonization.

Subjects: 20th Century History WWI History WWII History
December 1999
Transactions, Transgressions, Transformation

American Culture in Western Europe and Japan

Fehrenbach, H. & Poiger, U. (eds)

American culture has been one of the most controversial exports of the United States: greeted with enthusiasm by some, with hostility by others. Yet, few societies escape its influence. However, not all changes should be interpreted simply as "Americanization." The shaping of the postwar world has been much more complex than this term implies as is shown in this volume that explores the links between Americanization and modernity in Western Europe and Japan. In considering the impact of products and images ranging from movies and music to fashion and architecture, a multi-disciplinary group of contributors asks how American culture has been employed internationally in the articulation of postwar identities - be they national or subnational,socially sanctioned or socially transgressive. Their essays on France, Italy, Germany and Japan move beyond the simple paradigms of colonization and democratic modernization, yet retain a sensitivity to the asymmetries in the postwar power relationships between these countries and the United States. An extensive introduction historically locates changing interpretations of American influences abroad and suggests the problems and promises of "Americanization" as an analytical tool. Its comparative focus and interdisciplinary scope will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars of cold war and post-cold war history.

Subject: 20th Century History
March 1999
The Chameleon State

Global Culture and Policy Shifts in Britain and Germany, 1914-1933

Liu, T-L.

The role of the state in capitalist societies has been a bone of considerable contention among scholars. The two founding fathers of sociology held radically opposing views on this subject which were reflected in the numerous debates over subsequent decades to this day. Yet, no answer has been found to the vexing question: on whose side is the state in capitalist societies? The author examines current theories and, comparing Britain and Germany, shows that they are unable to explain the contradictory social and industrial policies in these two countries during the twentieth century. Based on in-depth archival and secondary sources the author offers an alternative theoretical framework, one that focuses on the interactions among historical contingencies, the global cultural context, and political processes.

Subject: 20th Century History
October 1998
Indoctrinability, Ideology and Warfare

Evolutionary Perspectives

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. & Salter, F.K. (eds)

Violent ethno-nationalist conflicts continue to mar the history of the twentieth century; yet no satisfactory answer to the question of why humans are susceptible to indoctrination by ideologies that lead to inter-group hostility has so far been found. In this volume an international team of leading scientists from many different fields approach this complex issue from a biological perspective, treating indoctrinability as a predisposition that has its roots in humanity's evolutionary past.

Subject: 20th Century History
January 1998
Enemy Images in American History

Fiebig-von Hase, R. & Lehmkuhl, U. (eds)

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
January 1998
Women and Socialism - Socialism and Women

Europe Between the World Wars

Gruber, H. & Graves†, P. (eds)

Until recently, histories of women tended to be segregated from the larger historical context. This pioneering volume places the role of women within the history of the interwar years, whenboth the women's and socialist movements became prominent, and raises the key question of how power was distributed between the genders in a historical setting. The emblematic title of this volume highlights the fundamental conception of this comparative study of eleven West European countries: that in the interwar decades two great movements gained in strength, converged, diverged, competed, and cooperated. Each of these movements is viewed as acomplex matrix of organized and unorganized participants. However, by far the most provocative questions deal with gender relations. Central to these are definitions of femininity and masculinity in terms of mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion at the workplace, in the home, and in the political arena. The mystique of the "new woman" in the 1920s and the 1930s challenged traditional notions of gender identity and relations, not the least of which was the redefinition of the role of men. The main issue addressed in this volume is not how male socialists "dealt with" the woman question or how women functioned in or outside left-wingparties; it rather centers on illustrating the power distribution between the sexes in specific political and cultural contexts. This rigorously focused and coherent volume, to which some of the best-known scholars in the field have contributed, will no doubt establish itself as the standard reference work for years to come.

Subjects: Gender Studies 20th Century History
September 1998
From Recovery to Catastrophe

Municipal Stabilization and Political Crisis

Lieberman, B.

Historians of the stabilization phase of Weimar Germany tend to identify German recovery after the First World War with the struggle to revise reparations and control hyperinflation. Focusing primarily on economic aspects is not sufficient, however, the author argues; the financial burden of recovery was only one of several major causes of reaction against the republic. Drawing on material from major German cities, he is able to trace the emergence of strong local activism and of comprehensive and functional policies of recovery on the municipal level which enjoyed broad political backing. Ironically, these same programs that created consensus also contained the potential for destabilization: they unleashed intense debate over the needs of the consumersand the purpose and extent of public spending, and with that of government intervention more generally, which accelerated the fragmentation of bourgeois politics, leading to the final destruction of the Weimar Republic.

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History
March 1997
Regime Changes

Macroeconomic Policy and Financial Regulation in Europe from the 1930s to the 1990s

Forsyth, D. & Notermans, T. (eds)

During the 1930s and 1940s, and again in the 1970s and 1980s, most European nations, indeed most industrial nations, undertook major changes in macroeconomic policy orientation and financial regulation. The contributors to this volume, historians, political scientists, and economists, identify the forces which drove these major policy shifts, and explore their implications for other areas of economic and social policy.

Subject: 20th Century History
March 1997
The Policing of Politics in the Twentieth Century

Historical Perspectives

Mazower, M. (ed)

The role of the police has, from its beginnings, been ambiguous, even janus-faced. This volume focuses on one of its controversial aspects by showing how the police have been utilized in the past by regimes in Europe, the USA and the British Empire to check political dissent and social unrest. Ideologies such as anti-Communism emerge as significant influences in both democracies and dictatorships. And by shedding new light on policing continuities in twentieth-century Germany and Italy, as well as Interpol, this volume questions the compatibility of democratic government and political policing.

Subjects: General Cultural Studies 20th Century History
January 1997
Humanity's Soldier

France and International Security, 1919-2001

Chuter, D.

French security policy has posed a puzzle to many people outside France, including politicians and even defense specialists such as the author, who took time off from his administrative position in Whitehall in order to study French thinking about security in detail. As with many other studies, he takes as his point of departure the traumatic defeat of 1940 but argues that the origins of current French policy are grounded in events and ideas that go back hundreds of years. They are ideas that are scarcely known or often misinterpreted in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Subject: 20th Century History
June 1997
Osthandel and Ostpolitik

German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer

Spaulding, R. M.

German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer.

Subject: 20th Century History
April 1996
Futurism and Politics

Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Reaction, 1909-1944

Berghaus, G.

"Futurism was the state of the Fascist regime" - this is the view one encounters in most books written on Futurist art and literature. Whilst there can be no doubt about Futurist involvement with the founding of the fascist movement, little is known about the internal relationship between Futurists and Fascists in the years 1918-22, nor about the reasons for the Futurists' departure from the Fascist movement in 1920, or about Futurist opposition to (and even armed struggle against) the Fascist regime after 1924. Whilst the public documents testifying to Futurist support of Mussolini are well known, little has been written about Futurist anti-fascism camouflaged as official adherence to the regime. This study, based primarily on unknown or unpublished documents discovered in state archives and private collections, presents a new andfar more complex picture of the relationship of the two movements than has previously been shown by critics and historians.

Subjects: 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
November 1996
The Rise of National Socialism and the Working Classes in Weimar Germany

Fischer, C. (ed)

Before seizing power the Nazi movement assembled an exceptionally broad social coalition of activists and supporters. Many were working class, but there remains considerable disagreement over the precise size and structure of this constituency and still more over its ideology and politics. An indispensable work for scholars of interwar Germany and Nazism in general.

Subject: 20th Century History
December 1996
From Caligari to California

Eric Pommer's Life in the International Film Wars

Hardt, U.

Known as one of the great producers and promoters of the film industry, Eric Pommer had a life-long commitment to German film - despite his emigration in 1933 - and worked in France and Britian, as well as the United States.

As German producer, studio executive, and film politician in the pre-Hitler era Erich (later Eric) Pommer (1889-1966), a native of Germany, was an innovator and pioneer, a vital force in leading German cinema to international acclaim with successes such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, The Nibelungen and The Blue Angel. As Motion Picture Control Officer of the US Military Government he undertook , from 1946-49, the difficult task of rebuilding West Germany's film industry from the ashes of the Second World War. He succeeded brilliantly, but not without paying the hefty price of becoming embroiled in the turmoil of postwar German politics which made him many friends, but also many enemies. This book is the first detailed account in English of the remarkable career of Pommer who became a legend in his own lifetime.

Subjects: Film Studies 20th Century History General Cultural Studies
November 1995
Japan and Germany in the Modern World

Martin, B.

First study of the fascinating parallelism that characterizes developments in Japan and Germany by one of Germany's leading Japan specialists.

With the founding of their respective national states, the Meiji Empire in 1869 and the German Reich in 1871, Japan and Germany entered world politics. Since then both countries have developed in strikingly similar ways, and it is not surprising that these two became close allies during the Second World War, although in the end this proved a "fatal attraction."

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History

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By Subject: 20th Century History

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Colonial Roots in African Soil

A Critical History of Forest Conservation in Sierra Leone

Munro, P.

Subjects: Environmental Studies Colonialism 20th Century History

Beyond Posthumanism

The German Humanist Tradition and the Future of the Humanities

Mathäs, A.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Educational Studies

José Antonio Primo de Rivera

The Reality and Myth of a Spanish Fascist Leader

Thomàs, J. M.

Subject: 20th Century History

Gustav Stresemann

The Crossover Artist

Pohl, K. H.

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History General History

The Configuration of the Spanish Public Sphere

From the Enlightenment to the Indignados

Jiménez Torres, D. & Villamediana González, L. (eds)

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Sociology

The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State

Histories of a Key Concept in the Nordic Countries

Edling, N. (ed)

Subjects: Economic History 20th Century History Political Economy

The Indoctrination of the Wehrmacht

Nazi Ideology and the War Crimes of the German Military

Sait, B.

Subjects: WWII History Genocide Studies 20th Century History

Rampart Nations

Bulwark Myths of East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism

Berezhnaya, L. & Hein-Kircher, H. (eds)

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Religion

Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire

Transnational Approaches

Habermas, R. (ed)

Subjects: 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History Religion

Luso-Tropicalism and Its Discontents

The Making and Unmaking of Racial Exceptionalism

Anderson, W., Roque, R., & Ventura Santos, R. (eds)

Subjects: Colonialism 20th Century History Sociology

Hazardous Chemicals

Agents of Risk and Change, 1800-2000

Homburg, E. & Vaupel, E. (eds)

Subjects: Environmental Studies 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History

Constructing Industrial Pasts

Heritage, Historical Culture and Identity in Regions Undergoing Structural Economic Transformation

Berger, S. (ed)

Subjects: 20th Century History Development Studies General Cultural Studies

Entangled Entertainers

Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Hödl, K.

Subjects: Jewish Studies 20th Century History General Cultural Studies

A Sad Fiasco

Colonial Concentration Camps in Southern Africa, 1900–1908

Kreienbaum, J.

Subjects: Genocide Studies Colonialism 20th Century History

Germany On Their Minds

German Jewish Refugees in the United States and Relationships with Germany, 1938–1988

Schenderlein, A. C.

Subjects: Jewish Studies Refugee & Migration Studies 20th Century History

A Human Garden

French Policy and the Transatlantic Legacies of Eugenic Experimentation

Rosental, P.-A.

Subjects: 20th Century History Sociology

A Living Past

Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America

Soluri, J., Leal, C., & Pádua, J. A. (eds)

Subjects: Environmental Studies 18th/19th Century History 20th Century History

The Witness as Object

Video Testimony in Memorial Museums

Jong, S. de

Subjects: Museum Studies 20th Century History Media Studies

The Ethics of Seeing

Photography and Twentieth-Century German History

Evans, J., Betts P., & Hoffmann, S.-L. (eds)

Subjects: 20th Century History Media Studies

The Wars of Yesterday