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Legal Entanglements
During the division of Germany, law became the object of ideological conflicts and the means by which the two national governments conducted their battle over political legitimacy. Legal Entanglements explores how these dynamics produced competing concepts of statehood and sovereignty, all centered on citizens and their rights. Drawing on wide-ranging archival sources, including recently declassified documents, Sebastian Gehrig traces how politicians, diplomats, judges, lawyers, activists and intellectuals navigated the struggle between legal ideologies under the pressures of the Cold War and decolonization. As he shows, in their response to global debates over international law and human rights, their work kept the legal cultures of both German states entangled until 1989.
Oil
This lavish full-colour reference guide explores the fascinating history of the substance that changed the modern world: oil. In this compelling account, Ian Fitzgerald tells the complete story of oil, from its formation over millions of years to its first discovery and use by humankind to its role as a crucial energy source and the conflicts that have since revolved around it.Along the way, he covers such themes as technological innovation, cartels and collusions, oil''s ever-depleting stocks and the rise of environmentalism, and its staggering influence on politics and business. Taking us from the days of oil barons like John D. Rockefeller and the first refineries of Standard Oil through to the formation of OPEC in the mid-20th century and the rise of fracking in the 21st, A History of Oil explores everything from the creation of plastics to the causes of the Gulf Wars.
The Wagner Group
Now available in paperback, this book tells the story of Russia’s most notorious private military company, the Wagner Group, revealing details of its operations never documented before, and the warning the group holds for the evolution of conflict. Jack Margolin traces the Wagner Group from its roots as a battlefield rumour to a private military enterprise tens of thousands strong. He follows individual commanders and foot soldiers as they fight in Ukraine, Syria and Africa. He shows Wagner mercenaries committing atrocities, plundering oil, diamonds and gold, and changing the course of conflicts in the name of the Kremlin. In documenting the Wagner Group’s story up to the dramatic demise of its chief director, Evgeniy Prigozhin, Margolin demonstrates what the Wagner Group represents for not only the future of Putin’s political system but the privatization of war.
Hypochondria
Hypochondria proposes a bold reimagining of a frequently dismissed condition. Susannah B. Mintz reframes health anxiety not as a pathology but as a site of creative potential – exploring hypochondria as a form of communication, a reorientation to time, a convergence of personal and communal identity, a declaration of bodymind needs and an embrace of ageing’s transformations. Far-ranging in its attention to historical periods, national literatures, philosophical thought and medical discourse, the book challenges the containment of suffering within narratives of professional authority. In doing so, it seeks to dispel shame and stigma, opening space for new forms of connection and understanding through a deeper attentiveness to the experience of illness.
Citizens into Dishonored Felons
Over the course of its history, the German Empire increasingly withheld basic rights—such as joining the army, holding public office, and even voting—as a form of legal punishment. Dishonored offenders were often stigmatized in both formal and informal ways, as their convictions shaped how they were treated in prisons, their position in the labour market, and their access to rehabilitative resources. With a focus on Imperial Germany’s criminal policies and their afterlives in the Weimar era, Citizens into Dishonored Felons demonstrates how criminal punishment was never solely a disciplinary measure, but that it reflected a national moral compass that authorities used to dictate the rights to citizenship, honour and trust.
Globalizing Automobilism
Why has “car society” proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In this follow-up to his magisterial Atlantic Automobilism, Gijs Mom traces the global spread of the automobile in the postwar era and investigates why adopting more sustainable forms of mobility has proven so difficult. Drawing on archival research as well as wide-ranging forays into popular culture, Mom reveals here the roots of the exuberance, excess, and danger that define modern automotive culture.
Twelve Japanese War Criminals and One Who Got Away
In Twelve Japanese War Criminals and One Who Got Away, Robert Cribb and Sandra Wilson tell the stories of twelve people who were convicted of war crimes in Allied courts in the Asia-Pacific region after the Second World War. Included is the story of one man who escaped prosecution. The crimes were committed in the Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Java, Malaya, Singapore, the Maluku islands, New Guinea, and Japan. The characters examined range from senior figures—General Honma Masaharu, who was convicted for the Bataan "death march," and Japan’s wartime prime minister Tojo Hideki—to lower-ranking and lesser-known people: a POW camp commander, a camp doctor, a Korean guard, a nurse charged with assisting in vivisection, a doctor convicted of cannibalism, a pimp, a Taiwanese interpreter, a businessman convicted of assault, an officer convicted of massacre, and another convicted of a single execution. Tsuji Masanobu, the man who escaped, was responsible for at least two massacres. He was eventually elected to parliament, indicating the willingness of some elements in postwar Japanese society to overlook wartime atrocities. The book examines the backgrounds and careers of each character and explains how they came to commit the acts for which they were convicted. It also considers their subsequent careers, if they survived (several were executed for their crimes). Based on years of meticulous research, the book brings to life the texture of individual action and experience in the tumultuous years of conflict and occupation during the Pacific War. The authors recognize Japanese cruelty but also suggest that most of the convicted war criminals were not inherently evil. Some were out of their depth or were forced into circumstances where they made bad decisions; some obeyed illegal orders or were caught in impossible situations in a war that Japan fought with insufficient resources. Ironically, the one who got away was probably the worst of them all.
Diamond and Juba
The remarkable story of a Black-Irish dance and its rival champions During the tumultuous years before the Civil War, Irish American John Diamond and African American William Henry Lane, known as Juba, became internationally famous as competitors in the art and sport of challenge dancing. April F. Masten's dual biography reconstructs the lives and work of these extraordinary dancers, casting fresh light on their contributions to the history of American popular culture. Challenge dancing was born from Black-Irish social interaction in the dockside markets, taverns, and theaters of antebellum New York. Promoted as a masculine art with close ties to boxing, it featured prolific gambling, hefty purses, and championship belts, yet also included women competitors, cross-dressing, and blackface. The astonishing jigs of its foremost practitioners attracted huge audiences across northeastern port cities, along Mississippi Valley circus routes, and into England's provincial music halls. Diamond and Juba's rivalry and parallel careers provide a rare glimpse into Black and immigrant strivings in an expanding nation keen for talent yet divided by prejudice. A vivid portrait of a forgotten world, Diamond and Juba tells the intertwined stories of two legendary performers.
The War to End All Wars
During World War I, New Jersey played a prominent role in the manufacturing of war-related munitions, created the infrastructure necessary to train and mobilize troops, and supplied a portion of the manpower necessary to fight overseas. Without the support of New Jersey’s industrial base, the war effort of the United States may very well have failed. Contributions from New Jersey ranged from artillery rounds from Amatol, fuses from Bloomfield, shells from Lyndhurst, gun carriages (Singer), aircraft engines (Duesenberg), Handley Page Bombers from Elizabeth, and ship building (New York Shipbuilding and ELCO). Over 140,000 New Jerseyans served during the war, and the state was home to 38 military installations by the end of the war, including Camp Dix. Troops from New Jersey included National Guard units activated and assigned to the 29th Division that trained at Camp McClellan, Alabama, and National Army soldiers (draftee) assigned to the 78th Division that trained at Camp Dix. New Jersey-based units from the 29th and 78th Infantry Divisions would fight in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Women, too, underwent training in New Jersey, in preparation to serve in the Army Signal Corps, while women from the state volunteered to serve with aid organizations including the Red Cross, and raised money for the war effort. In the post-war years, over 160 monuments were constructed across New Jersey to memorialize the war dead and honor the veterans who served in the Great War, including several of the famous “Spirit of the American Doughboy” statues produced by E. M. Viquesney. New Jersey mothers and widows would travel in pilgrimages to the battlefields and cemeteries of France, such as the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, as well as to Brookwood cemetery in Great Britain to visit the graves of their loved ones in the 1930s as part of the Gold Star Mothers and Widows Pilgrimage. This book will for the first time reveal the full extent of New Jersey’s pivotal role in America’s war effort during the Great War, and will shed light on prominent figures and their connections to New Jersey, such as Dr. Fred Albee, the father of bone grafting, Cecil Dorrian, the first American female War Reporter in World War I, Amabel Roberts, the first American nurse from New Jersey to die during the war in France, and Lillian Marx, who danced and sang in Newark during war support donation events.
Heads & Tales
For some 2700 years we have used coins to pay our debts and claim our dues. We have minted trillions of the little metal discs. Even the invention of paper money hardly slowed their proliferation. Indeed, coins made of gold continued to underpin the finances of the world until the twentieth century, but from that eminence the descent has been precipitous. It is safe to predict that sometime in our century coins will cease to circulate as currency. Our pockets will be the lighter but so will our connection to the past. We will have dispensed with something which for half of recorded history has preserved in hard copy, sometimes uniquely, an account of our doings. This book is a valedictory survey. It follows the story of coins from conception through substance to shadow. Presenting on average a tale for each generation since the beginning, it celebrates the rise and chronicles the demise of a remarkable invention.
American Metropolis
Mexico City was America's largest city in the seventeenth century – a genuine metropolis. In this deeply researched book, Tatiana Seijas reveals a rich tapestry of stories about essential workers who remade and transformed the city during this period. Her narrative style carries readers to a unique place and time with residents from around the world who sold food, facilitated transportation, provided care, and valued the city's silver. Free and enslaved people from Africa and Asia, immigrants, and Native Americans pursued opportunities in a wealthy, yet deeply unequal environment, where working people claimed parts of the city for themselves. They carved out spaces to create new businesses and protect their livelihoods, altering the cityscape itself in the process. American Metropolis brings Mexico City to life from the perspective of the working people who transformed this early modern metropolis.
Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s
Throughout her adult life, English novelist Virginia Woolf was surrounded by a tight group of friends and relatives. Known collectively as the Bloomsbury Group, they lived near each other in townhouses in the Bloomsbury section of London and in country homes in Sussex. Because of their strong influence on British literature, art and culture, much has been written about these creative people who lived in squares and loved in triangles, particularly in their early years. But by the 1920s, the Bloomsbury Group had come of age and were becoming more successful and well-known. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group in the Literary 1920s looks at the personal and professional lives of Virginia and her husband, Leonard Woolf, who founded the Hogarth Press in their London home; Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, her husband, art critic Clive Bell, and her partner in art and life, painter Duncan Grant; essayist Lytton Strachey who, after publication of his radical biography Eminent Victorians, awoke to find himself famous; art critic and founder of the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry; international economist John Maynard Keynes; E. M. Forster who published his last major novel, A Passage to India, in 1923; and American ex-patriate author of the epic 1922 poem, The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot. These characters hung out in drawing rooms, art studios and country homes, gossiping, bickering, loving and hating each other. Come back to the fabulous decade of the 1920s and follow these writers and artists as they re-invent literature and art.
Sonderkommando Elbe
By September 1944 the Third Reich was under constant attack by Allied bombers and suffering an onslaught by the Red Army to the east. The Nazi high command struggled for ideas to reduce the effect of the ceaseless bombing and thereby create some breathing space to build and strengthen their new weapon: jet-propelled aircraft. They believed that this new invention could turn the tide of the war. At the end of 1944 a proposal was offered by Oberst Hans-Joachim "Hajo" Herrmann. His plan called for 1,500 fighter aircraft to conduct a massive attack against an Allied bomber formation on April 7, 1945, inflicting such casualties that the Allies would think twice about continuing their bombing campaign. Attacking bombers was not a new idea, but the method of attack was new. The German pilots were to fly their planes into the bombers, causing enough damage to bring down the aircraft. Unlike the Japanese Kamikaze pilots who carried explosives on board and died in the attack, the German pilots were instructed to bail out and parachute to safety to fly another day. Sonderkommando Elbe: The Luftwaffe’s Kamikaze Force is the full story of the unit and its pilots.
Warbirds to Workhorses
Bob Davy and Keith Wilson have been combining their respective talents for more than twenty years, flying and photographing a variety of aircraft for flight test features, and having their work published around the world. This lavishly illustrated book represents the first opportunity to prepare a wide selection of their combined work in hardback form.Warbirds featured include the venerable North American P-51 Mustang (on which Bob gained a Type Rating), the UK’s last remaining airworthy and historically significant de Havilland Vampire T.11, and Bob’s own Yak-3 UTI. Also featured is the Stinson AT-19 Reliant I, often referred to as the ‘Gull Wing’.At the Workhorse end of the scale is the Helio Courier, an aircraft possessing amazing STOL performance, that later became infamous during its clandestine operations in Laos with Air America, often referred to as the CIA’s ‘Most Secret Airline’. Also featured is the Cessna Citation Mustang business jet, and the eight-seat Piper PA-31-350 Navajo Chieftain.For the floatplane enthusiasts, there is an article on flying a Maule M-7-235B Rocket Amphibian on and off a lake in Essex. Aerobatics fans can enjoy the articles on the Pitts S-2A Special and Slingsby T.67M-260. For the airline enthusiasts, Bob takes you on a commercial flight in a BAe 146 from Paris to Dublin (he was a captain on CityJet). And much, much more. Then there are features on the ‘Flying Egg’ – the Questair Venture, the Aviat Husky Pup, and the capable and occasionally aerobatic Vans RV-4. Finally, and for something completely different, join Bob inside Spitfires.com’s Spitfire simulator at Goodwood.Each of Bob Davy’s carefully crafted and occasionally, hard-hitting features is superbly illustrated with a range of dynamic air-to-air photographs, almost exclusively from the lens of Keith Wilson, a practitioner of air-to-air photography, with almost forty-five years’ experience. Whatever your specific taste in aviation, there is something for everyone to enjoy within the lavishly illustrated pages of this book.
German Aircraft Weaponry
From the outbreak of war in 1939, German Luftwaffe armament designers and technicians pioneered many revolutionary concepts in the barrelled armaments of their military aircraft, particularly as the threat posed by the combined US and British Allied strategic bombing campaign grew in intensity from 1943. Desperate solutions were sought in an effort to counter the threat posed by Allied bomber aircraft to German industry and infrastructure, which in turn saw the introduction into service of airborne guns with ever-increasing calibres and impressive levels of lethality. This book examines the use of the humble rifle calibre machine gun as an aircraft weapon along with the efforts to develop suitable cannon with greater destructive power for aircraft use, the advances made during the inter-war years and the various barrelled weaponry either used or proposed by the German Luftwaffe in the Second World War. This work encompasses not only the technical and operational appraisals of the various weapons used by the German Luftwaffe aircrews, which include some of Germany's leading surviving fighter aces of the Second World War, but also the armourers tasked with their day-to-day maintenance, the instructors and technicians on the ground, and those who found themselves at the receiving end of their firepower both in the air and on the ground. This unique work encompasses many new and previously unpublished testimonies as told by those who were there in their own words and for the first time.
Stalin’s ‘Wonder Tank’
The Soviet T-34 tank is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable symbols of the Red Army and its struggle against the Third Reich in the Second World War. Not surprisingly, over the years a considerable number of books and films have been dedicated to Stalin’s so-called ‘wonder tank’. Many historians, especially those in Russia, peremptorily call the T-34 the best tank of the war. In so doing, they often refer to the ‘authoritative’ opinion of Heinz Guderian and other German generals. Von Kleist, for example, is stated to have once referred to the T-34 as ‘the finest tank in the world’. But, as Dmitry Zubov sets out to explore in this book, was this the true pictur? he reality of the summer of 1941, following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, revealed that it took the Wehrmacht only a couple of months to turn Stalin’s tank armada into little more than a pile of scrap metal. Despite this inauspicious beginning to its combat service, the myth of the T-34’s ‘invincibility’ was already being born. It was a development that, argues Dmitry Zubov, was in part driven by the Soviet propaganda machine, but also by their enemy. As the fighting wore on, the Germans became increasingly bogged down in endless operations to cover their flanks from the mythical counterattacks of Stalin’s Red Army, which by that time had actually lost most of its combat capability. But to hide the consequences of Hitler’s incompetent command, German generals had to explain the collapse of Operation Barbarossa by the incredible resilience of Soviet soldiers, the appalling ‘Russian winter’, and finally, by the ‘vast superiority’, to quote Guderian, of the T-34 tank. Between them, Hitler’s commanders argued, they had torn apart their excellent plans. These facts motivated the author to examine the real history of the creation, production, and combat use of Stalin’s ‘wonder tank’. Under the numerous layers of Soviet secrecy, myths, propaganda and outright lies, he has exposed a bitter reality. The T-34 tank was not a masterpiece of Soviet engineering, but in fact a design that, in reality, was based on plans ‘borrowed’ by Soviets from designers in the West. Produced in an incredible hurry by unskilled workers, Stalin’s ‘wonder tank’ often presented an easy target for the German panzers and anti-tank gunners, and battlefield graves for their Soviet crews.
Vietnam on the Big Screen
America, it is said, deals with its trauma through the medium of Hollywood, and few experiences have been more traumatic than its involvement in the Vietnam War. As the last US helicopters fled the American Embassy compound during the fall of Saigon, they left behind a country devastated by twenty years of death and destruction. They were heading back to a country that was damaged in a different way. The America that ended its involvement in Vietnam in 1975 was defeated, humiliated, divided and scarred. It was a bewildering transformation for a nation that considered itself to be on the right side of history. Only a generation earlier, Americans were united in celebrating the bravery of the GIs and Marines who stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima and Normandy. Now they were confronted with an uglier face of war: pointless sacrifice, disillusioned and mutinous soldiers, massacres of innocent civilians and the shooting of unarmed student protestors. For a long time America found it impossible to process the experience, until Hollywood led the way. The movie industry had started out treating Vietnam like an extension of the Second World War. The gung-ho John Wayne action film The Green Berets (made with the full support of the Pentagon) had a simplistic “we’re the good guys” message. However, as American casualties mounted in Vietnam, social unrest erupted and the war’s aims looked ever murkier, the movie studios backed off. After The Green Berets in 1968 no major films were made about the conflict until the controversial and groundbreaking The Deer Hunter a decade later. The subject was deemed too hot to handle, although some brave filmmakers tackled it in roundabout ways (‘Soldier Blue’ was a re-telling of the My Lai massacre, set in the Old West). Eventually, The Deer Hunter ripped off the sticking plaster and let daylight into the American experience in Vietnam. Its depiction of US soldiers as victims, not heroes, caused fights in movie theatres and led to questions in Congress. But it paved the way for the greatest run of war movies ever made. Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and many more rewrote the grammar of combat films and helped a wounded nation come to terms with an unloved war. This is the story of how those films got made, how they were received at the time and how they shaped the American experience of Vietnam. The names behind them are legends in the movie industry, from directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and Michael Cimino to actors including John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, Robert de Niro and Meryl Streep.
The Wives of Henry VIII
The Wives of Henry VIII: Rethinking the Stories Behind the Symbols examines some of the small details about the six wives of Henry VIII that are often overlooked. This book is a revisionist close study that moves beyond the traditional narratives to present fresh, more nuanced perspectives. Focusing on significant moments and aspects that inform and showcase who these women were. Throughout these chapters, new research, fresh analysis, and remarkable discoveries come together to offer a deeper understanding of the women we know as the Six Wives of Henry VIII. We begin with a re-evaluation of Catherine of Aragon’s name through the lens of her family history and how it shaped her life, followed by an analysis of Catherine’s financial situation after the annulment. Anne Boleyn is considered in relation to her role in the Chateau Vert pageant, followed by an analysis of her use of French and English gable hoods, which includes a discussion of an incredible, newly discovered contemporary image of Anne. Jane Seymour’s religion and unpopularity are each examined in turn to uncover fresh perspectives on Henry’s third queen. Anna of Cleves’s adaption to life in England is discussed, followed by her life and status under Edward VI and Mary I. Katherine Howard’s performance of queenship is re-evaluated, as well as the connections between herself and and her cousin, Anne Boleyn. Finally, apocryphal tales of Kateryn Parr’s rise to the throne are reassessed, followed by an examination of how close she came to arrest and execution.
The Gestapo's Most Wanted: The White Mouse
The White Mouse: Gestapo’s Most Wanted tells the extraordinary true story of Nancy Wake during one of the darkest chapters in modern history. This new biography traces Nancy’s path across the globe, from her youth in Australia, to New York, London, Paris, and Marseilles – and her evolution from free-spirited journalist to wartime hero. When Europe slid towards war, Nancy found herself swept into the heart of the Resistance movement in Marseilles. And she chose to make a difference. What followed was a life marked by extraordinary courage, personal sacrifice, and unwavering defiance. Drawing on interviews, personal anecdotes, and rich historical detail, the book offers a full account of Nancy Wake’s life. It focuses not only on her most dangerous exploits but also examines the motivations and early influences that drove her to top the Gestapo’s Most Wanted List and become a leader in the Maquis. Her journey will take the reader from suburban Australia to daring missions behind enemy lines. More than just a tale of espionage, this is a story of risk, resilience, and the woman who made a vow to never look away from injustice — and kept it. Interwoven with historical context and dramatically retold, The White Mouse brings Nancy Wake’s courage and character to life, reclaiming her place in a period of history often dominated by men. For readers drawn to stories of defiance, resilience, and unsung wartime heroism, this is both an engaging biography and a reflection on bravery in the face of crisis.
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.




























