You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This book examines communist and post-communist literary and visual narratives, including the writings of prominent anti-communist dissidents and exiles such as Vladimir Nabokov, Czeslaw Milosz and Milan Kundera, exploring important themes including how Eastern European regimes and cultures have been portrayed as totalitarian, barbarian and "Orientalist" – in contrast to the civilized "West" – disappointment in the changes brought on by post-communist transition, and nostalgia for communism.
Mass media has become an integral part of the human experience. News travels around the world in a split second affecting people in other countries in untold ways. Although being on top of the news may be good, at least for news junkies, mass media also transmits values or the lack thereof, condenses complex events and thoughts to simplified sound bites and often ignores the essence of an event or story. The selective bibliography gathers the books and magazine literature over the previous ten years while providing access through author, title and subject indexes.
The years following World War II witnessed perhaps the greatest success story in Western history--the economic and political recovery of European democracies that had been devastated by the cataclysmic war. Peter Duignan and L.H. Gann convincingly demonstrate that the deep involvement of the United States was a key factor in this success. The Rebirth of the West is a broad, narrative analysis of every important aspect of Western society during this formative period--political, economic, social, cultural, and scientific. In addition to providing an interpretive synthesis of the vast literature on the subject, the authors make an important and original contribution to both the historical record of this period and current debates over the future of Europe.
This important book not only examines changing notions of nationhood and their complicated relationship to the Nazi past but also charts the wider history of the development of German political thought since World War II, while critically reflecting on some of the continuing blind spots among German writers and thinkers.
Interest in Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) has suffered from an impression of the complexity of his works and of the narrowness of his focus: on 'The Germans and their Eastern European neighbours'. The current study re-examines aspects of Bobrowski's 'Sarmatian' works, especially their chronological development, but places them within the wider context of the whole of his oeuvre. It looks at the long period of development before he discovered his 'theme' in the early 1950s and examines his development after Sarmatische Zeit and Schattenland Ströme, seeing the volume Wetterzeichen as moving increasingly away from the past and towards more contemporary issues. His short stories and novels are...
Shaping the Future maps out the ascetic practices of a Neitzschean way of life. Hutter argues that Nietzsche's doctrines are attempts and 'temptations' that aim to provoke his free-spirited readers into changing themselves by putting philosophy into practice in their lives.
Contents: Introduction. Dennis TATE: Trapped in the past? The identity problems of East German writers since the Wende. Stuart PARKES: Disunity and unity - The inter-German Literaturstreit of the early 1990s. Astrid HERHOFFER: Auf der Suche nach Wahrheit. Helmut PEITSCH: 'Vereinigung': Literarische Debatten über die Funktion der intellektuellen. Ian HUTCHINGS: Reunited Germany: bane or blessing for Europe? John THEOBALD & Gertrud ZUBER: Who wanted unification? Ann KENNARD: Emerging relations between Germany and Poland since German unification. Clive EDWARDS: Trade unions in the new Bundesländer: the shape of things to come? Marilyn FARR: Works councils in the new Bundesländer - the manage...
A translation of Eveline Hasler’s novel, Die Vogelmacherin— literally “The Bird-Maker Girl”—this book tells the story of three children who were prosecuted for witchcraft in seventeenth-century Europe. Challenging strict boundaries between fiction and history, Hasler’s novel draws on trial records and other archival sources that document the legal cases against these children. While the original work offers a detailed portrait of political and religious violence, Maierhofer goes a step further by providing essential context for the novel. Her wide-ranging introduction and meticulous annotations illuminate the relevance and wider significance of Hasler’s writing. For the first time in English, this book brings Hasler’s traumatic history of witchcraft trials to life, exposing the violence of a culture shaped by fear, authoritarian power, and ideals of conformity.
History.
This study evaluates the reception of Martin Walser's novels by critics and reviewers between 1957 and 1978 in West Germany, East Germany, Britain and the USA. It demonstrates the connection between the aesthetic responses and the political positions of the critics. The novel Jenseits der Liebe is identified as both a turning point in Walser's development and as a case of inconsistent reception by critics. Walser's treatment of the political psychology of the salaried employee with its deep loyalty conflicts disturbed the critics more profoundly than the identity problems of his earlier and later heroes.