Najnovšie - Encyklopédie populárno-náučné strana 118 z 148
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The Celts
A new history of the Celts that reveals how this once-forgotten people became a pillar of modern national identity in Britain, Ireland, and FranceBefore the Greeks and Romans, the Celts ruled the ancient world. They sacked Rome, invaded Greece, and conquered much of Europe, from Ireland to Turkey. Celts registered deeply on the classical imagination for a thousand years and were variously described by writers like Caesar and Livy as unruly barbarians, fearless warriors, and gracious hosts. But then, in the early Middle Ages, they vanished. In The Celts, Ian Stewart tells the story of their rediscovery during the Renaissance and their transformation over the next few centuries into one of the most popular European ancestral peoples. The Celts shows how the idea of this ancient people was recovered by scholars, honed by intellectuals, politicians, and other thinkers of various stripes, and adopted by cultural revivalists and activists as they tried to build European nations and nationalisms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Long-forgotten, the Celts improbably came to be seen as the ancestors of most western Europeans—and as a pillar of modern national identity in Britain, Ireland, and France. Based on new research conducted across Europe and in the United States, The Celts reveals when and how we came to call much of Europe “Celtic,” why this idea mattered in the past, and why it still matters today, as the tide of nationalism is once again on the rise.
Unstable Ground
Winner, 2025 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book AwardWinner, 2026 Lionel Trilling Book Award, Columbia CollegeWhat has gold done to people? What has it made them do? The Witwatersrand in South Africa, once home to the world’s richest goldfields, is today scattered with abandoned mines into which informal miners known as zama zamas venture in an illicit—often deadly—search for ore. Based on field research conducted across more than twenty-five years around these mines, Unstable Ground reveals the worlds that gold made possible—and gold’s profound costs for those who have lived in its shadow and dreamt of its transformative power. From the vantage point of the closure of South Africa’s gold mines, Rosalind C. Morris reconsiders their histories, beginning in the present and descending into the pasts that shaped them. Anchored in evocative descriptions of mining in the ruins, this book explores the social worlds built on gold and the lives that were remade and sometimes undone by the industry over a century and a half. Viewing this industry from its margins, against the backdrop of the cyanide revolution, the gold standard’s demise, and recurrent sinkholes, as well as the insurrectionary protests and violence that continue to this day, it recasts the history of South Africa and the incomplete effort to overcome apartheid amid the transformations of the global economy. In writing that is by turns immersive, incisive, and poetic, Morris unearths a history that was born of imperial aspiration and that persists as a speculative mirage. Interweaving ethnography, history, personal testimony, and political thought with striking readings of South African literary texts, Unstable Ground is a work of extraordinary ambition and depth.
The Principality of Antioch and its Frontiers in the Twelfth Century
An investigation into how Antioch maintained itself as an independent principality during a period of considerable challenges. Situated in northern Syria, on the eastern-most frontier of Latin Christendom, the principality of Antioch was a medieval polity bordered by a host of rival powers, including the Byzantine Empire, the Armenian Christians of Cilicia, the rulers of the neighbouring Islamic world and even the other crusader states, the kingdom of Jerusalem and the counties of Edessa and Tripoli. Coupled with the numerous Christian, Muslim and Jewish communities who populated the region, Antioch's Frankish settlers - initially installed into power by the military successes of the First Crusade - thus faced numerous challenges to their survival. This book examines how the ruling elites of the principality sought to manage these competing interests in order to maintain Antioch's existence during the troubled twelfth century, particularly following the death of Prince Bohemond II in 1130. His demise helped to spark renewed interest from Byzantium and the kingdom of Jerusalem, and came at a time of both Islamic resurgence under the Zengids of Aleppo and Mosul, as well as Armenian power growth under the Rupenids. An examination of Antioch's diplomatic and military endeavours, its internal power structures and its interaction with indigenous peoples can therefore help to reveal a great deal about how medieval Latins adapted to the demands of their frontiers.
Humans
"Surekha Davies invites readers to imagine the lives of historical monsters and to empathize with their often-wretched treatment." - Science MagazineA history of how humans have created monsters out of one another—from our deepest fears—and what these monsters tell us about humanity's present and future. Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal. In an age when corporations increasingly see people as obstacles to profits, this book traces the long, volatile history of monster-making and charts a better path for the future. The result is a profound, effervescent, empowering retelling of the history of the world for anyone who wants to reverse rising inequality and polarization. This is not a history of monsters, but a history through monsters.
Ground Combat
A challenge to common assumptions about the future of land warfareGround Combat reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges today's overly subjective and often inaccurate approaches to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to offer an evidence-based approach to examining the future of war. Connable created and analyzed an original dataset of more than four hundred global ground combat cases, showing that there was an evolutionary rather than revolutionary shift in the characteristics of ground combat from World War II through the early 2020s. Despite advances in military technology, tanks, artillery, and infantry remain central to how war is waged on land. This book asks readers to stop and think about the implications of these findings for force planning and future predictions about military-technical revolutions. This book sets an essential evidentiary baseline for military officers, policymakers, and scholars who think about the future of modern war.
Walking the Hamster to the Fountain
'Walking the Hamster to the Fountain' is an extremelyentertaining, well-researched book which chronicles, in lively andunforgettable detail, some of the thousand-year history of the English villageof Hempstead, Essex, from the Norman Conquest to the Kray twins. Firmlygrounded in English history, the book is packed with stories of country life,parsons, celebrities, arson, political and intrigue. It will appeal to allthose who enjoy disappearing down historical 'rabbit holes'. The title comes from an interview with a former resident,recalling hot summers between the wars when the wells dried up and people hadto 'walk into Hempstead to the fountain' for water. When the interview wastranscribed, the computer produced the titular hamster. 'Greedy vicars, a school bullyturned merchant, child brides, hellfire preachers, eccentric generals, familycurses and dynamic women. Thiswide-ranging and thoroughly researched work weaves vibrant personal storiesinto a national and sometimes international narrative. This is local social history at its finest.'---Dr Elizabeth Goodwin, SeniorLecturer, Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies, York St. John University
Red Star over the Black Sea
Nâzim Hikmet (1902-1963) is best known as a poet and communist whose daring flight by motorboat from Turkey to the Eastern Bloc captured international headlines in 1951. One of the most important poets to have written in the Turkish language, Nâzim Hikmet''s dramatic life story is fascinating in its own right, but also intersects with the story of the broader twentieth century. James H. Meyer situates Nâzim Hikmet within the broader context of Turkish communist "border-crossers", individuals whose lives would go on to be shaped significantly by their ability, inability, or need to traverse the frontier. Born at the turn of the twentieth century and coming of age in the early 1920s, the women and men from Nâzim Hikmet''s generation were the last of the Ottomans. Children of empire, they had grown up in an era of porous frontiers, but by the time they reached their third decade, these borders had begun to close.Drawing upon an enormous amount of previously untapped archival materials and personal papers from Moscow, Istanbul, Amsterdam, and Washington, DC, Meyer has written a biography of Nâzim Hikmet unlike any other. A book of world history wrapped inside a life story, Red Star over the Black Sea shows how changing attitudes toward borders and the people who cross them impacted a late imperial generation all the way up to the final years of the Cold War.
Blue Helmet
Blue Helmet: My Year as a UN Peacekeeper in South Sudan tells the story of a country, a conflict, and the institution of peacekeeping through the eyes of a senior American military officer working on the ground in one of the most dangerous countries on the planet. South Sudan is rich in natural resources, and its fertile soil could make it the breadbasket of East Africa. Yet it remains the poorest and most corrupt country in the region, plagued by disease, famine, and ethnic strife. Abductions, sexual violence, death, and displacement affect tens of thousands of people each year. Edward H. Carpenter pulls readers into his world, allowing them to experience the powerful, poignant realities of being a peacekeeper in South Sudan. In the process, the author reveals how the United Nations really conducts its missions: what it tolerates and how it often falls short of achieving the aims of its charter-equal rights, justice, and economic advancement for all people-with the use of armed forces limited to serving those common interests by keeping the peace and preventing the scourge of war. It is a story that is eye-opening, unsettling, and always compelling. Global leaders may fairly claim that they have done everything they can to help South Sudan help itself: they’ve dispatched thousands of peacekeepers and provided billions of dollars in aid. So why is the UN still struggling to fulfill its mandate to protect civilians and safeguard the delivery of humanitarian assistance? What could be done better? Bringing the reader to the forefront of action, Blue Helmet answers these questions and raises others about how modern peacekeeping missions are organized and overseen, shedding light on some of the contradictions at the heart of peacekeeping.
Mission, Race and Colonialism in Malawi
Mission, race and colonialism were three forces shaping Malawi?s history during the early years of the twentieth century. These three found a concentrated meeting point in the life of Scottish missionary Alexander Hetherwick, who led Blantyre Mission from 1898 to 1928. This book presents a fresh assessment of this towering figure in Malawi?s history, contesting the scholarly consensus that Hetherwick betrayed the early ideals of Blantyre Mission by compromising too much with the colonial system that was in force during his leadership. The book assesses the pervasive influence of colonialism, from which Hetherwick was not exempt, and traces the ways in which he resisted such influence through his relentless commitment to the interests of the African community and the inspiration he found in the emergence of the African church.
The Gorodomlya Island Project
When 20-year old RAF recruit Neville Cox, or ‘Cocky’, joins up in 1946, he is dismayed that the end of the war means he will never get to fly. Instead, he will be doing more of the technical drawing he is trained for. On a mission to a former Nazi-supported laboratory in Austria, he meets pilot and scientific intelligence expert Eric Ackermann, forming a friendship that lasts for years.They encounter Russians who are, like them, combing out ‘scientific institutes’ in a search for remnants and instruments connected with the V2; the ‘wonder weapon’ that devastated London in the Blitz.Shockingly, Cocky is abducted from an airfield on his return from a trip to the UK and taken to Gorodomlya Island, where German rocket scientists have been supporting Soviet efforts to recreate and develop the V2 rocket. Utilising the expertise of their captives on the island and in several other ‘design bureaus’ around Moscow, the Soviets aim is a powerful rocket with a nuclear warhead, four times more deadly than the atomic bomb the Americans dropped on Hiroshima.When a colleague is ‘disappeared’ to a remote closed city for using a self-made radio to pass on technical secrets, Cocky is convinced he will be next. An opportunity to escape arises through a visiting string quartet, but his eventual escape is not the planned diplomatic intervention, but a risky and hair-raising effort to outwit the KGB.Following a career in signals intelligence, Cocky struggles to adjust to civilian life, and to having a civilian wife. Three children and ten years later, he escapes again with a new partner, this time to Nova Scotia in Canada, where he still lives to this day.
Queen Katherine and the Howards
Writings of certain nineteenth and twentieth-century historians continue to colour our perceptions of the past, but is the picture of Katherine Howard painted by some of them necessarily fair? Was she really a neglected young girl set up by an unscrupulous family to enable them to exercise control over Henry VIII, or a secure teenager brought up in the home of her illustrious step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, who treated her well? Ultimately, was her untimely death the fault of others or the result of Katherine’s own ill-advised choice? hrough original research and use of primary sources, Queen Katherine and the Howards: A Tudor Family on the Brink of Disaster examines the Howards’ journey from practising law in East Anglia to their elevation to the dukedom of Norfolk by Richard III and, following the Yorkist defeat at Bosworth, their decades of service and loyalty to the fledgling Tudor dynasty.The final weeks of Katherine Howard’s short life, presented as a day-to-day narrative, enables the reader to appreciate how terrifyingly quickly the old duchess and Katherine’s associates, most involved against their wishes, were rounded up and consigned to the Tower for concealing what they knew of her lively past.The last chapters examine how the third Duke of Norfolk, Katherine’s paternal uncle, although surviving the turmoil of the scandal and continuing in his roles as Lord Treasurer and Henry VIII’s leading general, remained highly vulnerable; he and his son eventually fell victim to the king’s deadly paranoia.
The Brookwood Killers
Nestled deep in the Surrey countryside stands the Brookwood 1939-1945 Memorial. Maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, its panels contain the names of nearly 3,500 men and women of the land forces of Britain and the Commonwealth who died in the Second World War and who have no known grave.Among the men and women who names are carved on the memorial are Special Operations Executive agents who died as prisoners or while working with Allied underground movements, servicemen killed in the various raids on enemy occupied territory in Europe, such as Dieppe and Saint-Nazaire, men and women who died at sea in hospital ships and troop transports, British Army parachutists, and even pilots and aircrew who lost their lives in flying accidents or in aerial combat.But the panels also hide a dark secret. Entwined within the names of heroes and heroines are those of nineteen men whose last resting place is known, and whose deaths were less than glorious. All were murderers who, following a civil or military trial, were executed for the heinous offence they had committed. The bodies of these individuals, with the exception of one, lay buried in un-consecrated ground.As Paul Johnson reveals, the cases of the ‘Brookwood Killers’ are violent, disturbing and often brutal in their content. They are not war crimes, but crimes committed in a time of war, for which the offender has their name recorded and maintained in perpetuity. Something that is not always applied in the case of the victim.
Making the Enfield Pattern 1853 Rifle-Musket
The Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle Musket embodies a number of revolutionary milestones for Britain; it, and the carbines and short rifles derived from it, were the first rifled firearms to be issued universally to all troops; its design owed more to the French 1777 musket than to its English forbears; it was the first firearm to be produced en masse extensively by machinery; in 1857 it became the first firearm in Britain to be made fully interchangeable.The nature of this new rifle presented a number of challenges for the private contractors who traditionally had supplied military firearms and some unique contract documents specifying standards are shown. Their failure to meet contractual obligations led to the formation of the Select Committee on Small Arms in 1854 to examine its manufacture and procurement. However, its outcome was pre-empted - in that same year the Committee on the Machinery of the United States, was sent to America to examine the machinery used in gun manufacture and given authority to purchase appropriate machines for use at Enfield.Aspects of its manufacture at Enfield are covered in a small number of contemporary accounts. These vary in the detail provided and contain errors which have been noted and corrected.Access to a wealth of specimens, drawings and documents not previously studied or published, has allowed the manufacture of this iconic rifle using these new technologies to be presented in unprecedented detail.
Berlin
Now capital of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berlin rose from insignificant origins on swampy soil, becoming a city of immigrants over the ages. Through a series of ten vignettes, Mary Fulbrook discusses the periods and regimes that shaped its character ? whether Prussian militarism; courtly culture and enlightenment; rapid industrialisation and expansion; ambitious imperialism; experiments with democracy; or repressive dictatorships of both right and left, dramatically evidenced in the violence of World War and genocide, and then in the Wall dividing Cold War Berlin. This book also presents Berlin''s distinctive history as firmly rooted in specific places and sites. Statues and memorials have been erected and demolished, plaques displayed and displaced, and streets named and renamed in recurrent cycles of suppression or resurrection of heroes and remembrance of victims. This vivid and engaging introduction thus reveals Berlin''s startling transformations and contested legacies through ten moments from critical points in its multi-layered history.
Kut: The Death of an Army
Kut: The Death of an Army is the fascinating, yet largely forgotten, story of the British-Indian Army that was besieged in Mesopotamia from 1915 to 1916. It is an expert account of the tragic five-month Turkish siege, in which their enemies essentially outlasted them.The author reveals the day-to-day preoccupations of not only the Anglo-Indian forces, but their enemies the Turks as well as local civilians caught in the chaos. Throughout the campaign, the British were beaten back by the Turks, and the ever-prevailent human suffering of the men, so far away from home in this foreign ground, less than helped the cause: starvation, heavy shelling, inadequate medical supplies and disease were all taking their toll. By the end of the campaign, approximately 30,000 British and Indian soldiers had lost their lives.This informative book will be of interest to anyone wanting a concise and accessible introduction to the conflict and will be essential reading for both students of the First World War, as well as those who have a penchant for military history in general.
Hitler’s War Against the Partisans During Operation Barbarossa
From the start of the war on the Eastern Front, Hitler’s Ostheer, his Eastern Army, would wage a vernichtungskrieg, or war of annihilation, in the East. Never before had such a wide-reaching campaign been fought.Preparations for Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union had included the drawing up of plans and allocation of resources to secure the newly conquered territories. These plans included the premeditated murder of many innocent civilians. Adolf Hitler said as much when in July 1941, shortly after Stalin ordered the formation of partisans, he told his Army High Command: ‘This partisan war has some advantage for us; it enables us to eradicate everyone who opposes us.’Anticipating resistance to Nazi occupation and rule, Hitler instructed the Ostheer to act ruthlessly, not only on the front lines but in the rear areas as well. When, in July 1941, Stalin ordered partisan forces to be created, the stage was therefore set for the largest and most savage conflict ever waged between a modern military force and a guerrilla army. The scale of the partisan and anti-partisan war on the Eastern Front was as costly and bitterly fought as the struggle on the front lines themselves. Employing thousands of primary source documents and scouring eight separate state archives in six countries over a twenty-two-year period, Antonio J. Munoz has produced what can be described as a definitive account of this part of the war behind the front lines in the East during the invasion of the Soviet Union.From the very beginning, the Nazis fought this war ruthlessly, by eliminating not only actual guerrillas, but a good portion of the civilian population. Employing dozens of wartime anti-partisan operational instructions, plus newly-created detailed battle maps and full orders of battle, Dr. Munoz brings this little-known conflict behind the lines into focus for the very first time.The war behind the lines is detailed by district. This includes the Reichskommissariat Ostland region, which comprised the Generalbezirk Estland (Estonia), Generalbezirk Lettland (Latvia), Generalbezirk Litauen (Lithuania), Generalbezirk Bialystok (Northeastern Poland), and Generalbezirk Weißruthenien (Belarus). The book also covers the guerrilla and anti-partisan war in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (Ukraine region) as well as in north, central and southern Russia. For Russia proper, anti-partisan operations against the guerrillas are broken down by army group area.Not only are the operations described, but the reader will also learn about guerrilla attacks and how the entire partisan movement grew from year to year, and region to region. Hitler’s War Against the Partisans During Operation Barbarossa documents the whole of the beginning of the savage partisan war between June 1941 and the spring of 1942. Never before has every major, and some minor, anti-guerrilla operation been described in such detail.
Nursing at the Frontline
About 10 years ago a chance encounter led Bandy to be entrusted with a treasure trove of wartime notes, photos, paintings and ephemera that coalesced themselves into the memoirs of a WW2 RAF Nursing Orderley, LAC Harold Scrafield.A story unfolded through these papers of an older call up, wartime nursing, and travel through the Mediterranean area during the war. Further research found that one of “Scra’s” postings was to a secret medical mission in Yugoslavia. This was Maj Lindsay Rogers’ SOE medical expedition to Titos Partisans organised by Fitzroy Maclean. Of course, this is not described as such in his writings, just as a trip from Bari to Yugoslavia via landing craft, and “escape by HM Gunboat” back to Ancona in Italy. Included inside are many of Scra’s original and unpublished photos, and an amount of his pictures of the partisans both in Yugoslavia and at Bari.Nursing at the Frontline tells of his entry into Carthage, initially sleeping on the hastily dug graves of the German defenders, the story of the units hosts, the White Sisters and the mostly unknown day to day routine of the an RAF Mobile Field Hospital.Scra also finds himself with air operational squadrons, finds time to photograph before and after pictures of the bombing of Monte Cassino, and to deal with death.Now, over 40 years since Scra wrote down his memoirs in long hand, almost 80 since the events he describes and 10 years since Bandy was entrusted with them, they are published to make for a fascinating read. From Carthage and the White Sisters to the events in Yugoslavia that Scra was involved with. These memoirs take you into the under reported and little known world of the wartime male RAF Nursing Orderly at the sharp end.
Searching for the Last Anglo-Saxon King
Harold Godwinson occupied his place in the chronicles for more than twenty years after bursting onto the political sphere when he was barely out of his teens. His role in English history has always been overshadowed by his failure to defend his crown and country against the might of William the Conqueror and his invaders. His demise at the hands of a Franco-Norman hit squad wrought the death knell of Anglo-Saxon rule. Reigning for just ten months, Harold''s accomplishments as dux Anglorum, and later king of England, were undermined by the Norman propaganda that was waged against his memory, long after his grisly end in 1066.But just who was this man, who some historians recall as one of England''s greatest rulers? What were his origins? Is there any truth that he could trace his ancestry to the House of Wessex, and did he really usurp the throne from Duke William, the Bastard of Normandy? In this re-examining of this great historical figure of the eleventh century, we glean new theories and ideas not only about Harold''s life, but also questions historians have pondered upon for years. Did Edward really offer the throne to William? And how much of William''s claim was truth or fictio? aula Lofting presents a thoughtful and careful critique of the previous research. Examining his life through a telescopic view of the primary sources, she offers the reader a more accurate evaluation of who he was, how he died, and what happened to his remains after his death on a field near Hastings on October 1066.
A Dark History of Whisky
The book you hold in your hands is not a standard whisky book. Of course, it does contain information that can be found in countless other books on the subject, such as tasting notes, distillery histories and the general development of the golden liquid we all adore. A whisky book that did not contain such information would be odd indeed, but the emphasis in the following narrative is very much on the darker history of the drink. Whisky noir, if you please.Within these pages can be found cannibals, ghouls and ghosts - unlikely tales that all have one thing in common; whisky. Not just whisky, though, for we are delving deep into the amber gold and turning over a history that has never been told. Until now.Interspersed with whisky quotes, some well-known, other’s more obscure, with this book to hand the reader will never be without an interesting snippet of conversation when sharing a whisky with friends.
V kategórii populárno - náučné encyklopédie nájdete široký výber kníh, ktoré vám poskytnú poznatky z rôznych oblastí zaujímavým a zrozumiteľným spôsobom. Encyklopédie vám pomôžu získať komplexný prehľad o rôznych témach, ako ľudské telo a človek, príroda, vesmír, veda a technika a história.
Naša ponuka encyklopédií populárno-náučného charakteru vám umožní objaviť fascinujúci svet poznania a rozšíriť svoje vedomosti o rôznych témach.
