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Emphasizing the importance of popular culture and the wealth of knowledge that can be gained through an analysis of the daily lives and practices of individuals, this book serves as an introduction to Czech popular culture. It includes 600 entries, cross-referenced to allow readers to pursue particular topics in greater depth.
In The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare gave the landlocked country of Bohemia a coastline—a famous and, to Czechs, typical example of foreigners' ignorance of the Czech homeland. Although the lands that were once the Kingdom of Bohemia lie at the heart of Europe, Czechs are usually encountered only in the margins of other people's stories. In The Coasts of Bohemia, Derek Sayer reverses this perspective. He presents a comprehensive and long-needed history of the Czech people that is also a remarkably original history of modern Europe, told from its uneasy center. Sayer shows that Bohemia has long been a theater of European conflict. It has been a cradle of Protestantism and a bulwark of the Coun...
Written in the early 1890s, before Czech independence and in an age of patriotic upsurge and romanticism, these thirty-four tales quite naturally reflect a glorification of the Czech past. While the details of the legends are necessarily archaic, peopled by kings and noblemen, ghosts and magic, the themes are universal. Now at the dawn of a new era of Czech independence, they provide a fascinating new perspective to the contemporary situation.
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"The Grandmother" is a novella written by Czech writer Božena Němcová in 1855. It is her most popular work and is regarded as a classic piece of Czech literature. The main action of the novel takes place during the first one or two years after the Grandmother has come to live at the Old Bleachery with her daughter's family, to help manage the household. The father is frequently absent due to his job as equerry to the local noblewoman, which takes him away to Vienna during the winter. This most frequently read book of the Czech nation was published more than 300 times in Czech alone and translated into 21 other languages.
While the roots of the detective novel go back to the 19th century, the genre reached its height around 1925 to 1945. This work presents information on 21 British and American women who wrote during the 20th century. As a group they were largely responsible for the great popularity of the detective novel in the first half of the century. The British authors are Dora Turnbull (Patricia Wentworth), Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Elizabeth Mackintosh (Josephine Tey), Ngaio Marsh, Gladys Mitchell, Margery Allingham, Edith Pargeter (Ellis Peters), Phyllis Dorothy James White (P.D. James), Gwendoline Butler (Jennie Melville), and Ruth Rendell, and the Americans are Patricia Highsmith, Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Amanda Cross), Edna Buchanan, Kate Gallison, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Patricia Cornwell, Carol Higgins Clark, and Megan Mallory Rust. A flavor of each author's work is provided.
If nationalism is the assertion of legitimacy for a nation and its effectiveness as a political entity, why do many nations emphasize images of their own defeat in understanding their history? Using Israel, Serbia, France, Greece and Ghana as examples, the author argues that this phenomenon exposes the ambivalence that lurks behind the passions nationalism evokes. Symbols of defeat glorify a nation's ancient past, while reenacting the destruction of that past as a necessary step in constructing a functioning modern society. As a result, these symbols often assume a foundational role in national mythology. Threats to such symbols are perceived as threats to the nation itself and consequently are met with desperation difficult for outsiders to understand.
Describes, surveys, and discusses the major historical aspects of the Habsburg Empire - diplomatic, political, institutional, socioeconomic, and cultural.