You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Weimar Germany still fascinates us, and now this complex and remarkably creative period and place has the history it deserves. Eric Weitz's Weimar Germany reveals the Weimar era as a time of strikingly progressive achievements--and even greater promise. With a rich thematic narrative and detailed portraits of some of Weimar's greatest figures, this comprehensive history recaptures the excitement and drama as it unfolded, viewing Weimar in its own right--and not as a mere prelude to the Nazi era. Weimar Germany tells how Germans rose from the defeat of World War I and the turbulence of revolution to forge democratic institutions and make Berlin a world capital of avant-garde art. Setting the ...
A global history of human rights in a world of nations that grant rights to some while denying them to others Once dominated by vast empires, the world is now divided into some 200 independent countries that proclaim human rights—a transformation that suggests that nations and human rights inevitably develop together. But the reality is far more problematic, as Eric Weitz shows in this compelling global history of the fate of human rights in a world of nation-states. Through vivid histories from virtually every continent, A World Divided describes how, since the eighteenth century, nationalists have established states that grant human rights to some people while excluding others, setting the stage for many of today’s problems, from the refugee crisis to right-wing nationalism. Only the advance of international human rights will move us beyond a world divided between those who have rights and those who don't.
Why did the twentieth century witness unprecedented organized genocide? Can we learn why genocide is perpetrated by comparing different cases of genocide? Is the Holocaust unique, or does it share causes and features with other cases of state-sponsored mass murder? Can genocide be prevented? Blending gripping narrative with trenchant analysis, Eric Weitz investigates four of the twentieth century's major eruptions of genocide: the Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on historical sources as well as trial records, memoirs, novels, and poems, Weitz explains the prevalence of genocide in the twentieth century--and shows how...
From the Baltic to the Black Sea, four major empires with ethnically and religiously diverse populations encountered each other along often changing and contested borders. Examining this geographically vast, multicultural region through a variety of methodological lenses, this volume offers informed and dispassionate analyses of how the many populations of these borderlands managed to coexist in a previous era and why the areas eventually descended into violence. An understanding of this region will help readers grasp the preconditions of interethnic coexistence and the causes of ethnic violence and war in many of the world's other borderlands both past and present.
Twenty-three chapters by American, British, and German scholars explore the meanings of German socialism and communism from a variety of methodical and thematic perspectives often influenced by feminist and poststructuralist theories. Among the topics explored are: the Lassallean labor movement; depictions of gender, militancy, and organizing in the German socialist press at the turn of the century; communism and the public spheres of Weimar Germany; cultural socialism, popular culture, mass media, and the democratic project, 1900-1934; unity sentiments in the socialist underground, 1933-1936; population policy in the DDR, 1945-1960; the post-war labor unions and the politics of reconstruction; communist resistance between Comintern directives and Nazi terror; and the passing of German communism and the rise of a new New Left. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
"Broué enables us to feel that we are actually living through these epoch-making events.... [D]o not miss this magnificent work."--Robert Brenner, UCLA A magisterial, definitive account of the upheavals in Germany in the wake of the Russian revolution. Broué meticulously reconstitutes six decisive years, 1917-23, of social struggles in Germany. The consequences of the defeat of the German revolution had profound consequences for the world. Pierre Broué (1926-2005) was for many years Professor of Contemporary History at the Institut d'études politiques in Grenoble and was a world renowned specialist on the communist and international workers' movements.
Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to T...
This book investigates how decolonization transformed British society in the 1950s and 1960s, and examines the relationship between the postwar and the postimperial.
The nature of Weimar's terminal crisis - how a politically liberal and culturally progressive society could succomb to fascism - remains one of the central historical questions of our century. In this major work, Detlev J.K. Peukert offers a stimulating interpretation that not only places Weimar in the history of twentieth-century Germany but also reveals it as an archetype of the ambivalences and pathologies of advanced industrial society.
The dramatic transformations of the the 1990s - the end of the Cold War, the establishment of political liberties and market economies in Eastern Europe, German unification - quickly led commentators to proclaim the end of all ideologies and the complete triumph of liberal capitalism. Just as quickly, however, right-wing extremism began a surge in Europe that has not significantly abated to this day. Fascism and Neofascism is a collection of essays that is distinctive in two important ways. First, unlike most volumes, which cover either historical fascism or the recent radical right, Fascism and Neofascism spans both periods. Secondly, this volume also aims to bring newer modes of inquiry, rooted in cultural studies, into dialogue with more 'traditional' ways of viewing fascism. The editors' approach is deliberately interdisciplinary, even eclectic.