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Author : Geoffrey Wawro
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 472 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2014-04-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9780465080816
A prizewinning military historian explores a critical but overlooked cause for World War I: the staggering decrepitude of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Author : Andrew Wheatcroft
Publisher : Random House
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2009-11-10
Category : History
ISBN : 9781409086826
In 1683, two empires - the Ottoman, based in Constantinople, and the Habsburg dynasty in Vienna - came face to face in the culmination of a 250-year power struggle: the Great Siege of Vienna. Within the city walls the choice of resistance over surrender to the largest army ever assembled by the Turks created an all-or-nothing scenario: every last survivor would be enslaved or ruthlessly slaughtered. The Turks had set their sights on taking Vienna, the city they had long called 'The Golden Apple' since their first siege of the city in 1529. Both sides remained resolute, sustained by hatred of their age-old enemy, certain that their victory would be won by the grace of God. Eastern invaders had always threatened the West: Huns, Mongols, Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and many others. The Western fears of the East were vivid and powerful and, in their new eyes, the Turks always appeared the sole aggressors. Andrew Wheatcroft's extraordinary book shows that this belief is a grievous oversimplification: during the 400 year struggle for domination, the West took the offensive just as often as the East. As modern Turkey seeks to re-orient its relationship with Europe, a new generation of politicians is exploiting the residual fears and tensions between East and West to hamper this change. The Enemy at the Gate provides a timely and masterful account of this most complex and epic of conflicts.
Author : Niall Ferguson
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 497 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2021-05-04
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780593297384
"All disasters are in some sense man-made." Setting the annus horribilis of 2020 in historical perspective, Niall Ferguson explains why we are getting worse, not better, at handling disasters. Disasters are inherently hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises. and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet in 2020 the responses of many developed countries, including the United States, to a new virus from China were badly bungled. Why? Why did only a few Asian countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? While populist leaders certainly performed poorly in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work--pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters. In books going back nearly twenty years, including Colossus, The Great Degeneration, and The Square and the Tower, Ferguson has studied the foibles of modern America, from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online fragmentation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics, cliodynamics, and network science, Doom offers not just a history but a general theory of disasters, showing why our ever more bureaucratic and complex systems are getting worse at handling them. Doom is the lesson of history that this country--indeed the West as a whole--urgently needs to learn, if we want to handle the next crisis better, and to avoid the ultimate doom of irreversible decline.
Author : Geoffrey Wawro
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 712 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2018-09-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9780465093922
The "stirring," definitive history of America's decisive role in winning World War I (Wall Street Journal). The American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, and yet it has all but vanished from view. Historians have dismissed the American war effort as largely economic and symbolic. But as Geoffrey Wawro shows in Sons of Freedom, the French and British were on the verge of collapse in 1918, and would have lost the war without the Doughboys. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, described the Allied victory as a "miracle" -- but it was a distinctly American miracle. In Sons of Freedom, prize-winning historian Geoffrey Wawro weaves together in thrilling detail the battles, strategic deliberations, and dreadful human cost of the American war effort. A major revision of the history of World War I, Sons of Freedom resurrects the brave heroes who saved the Allies, defeated Germany, and established the United States as the greatest of the great powers.
Author : Martyn Rady
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2020-08-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9781541644496
The definitive history of a powerful family dynasty who dominated Europe for centuries -- from their rise to power to their eventual downfall. In The Habsburgs, Martyn Rady tells the epic story of a dynasty and the world it built -- and then lost -- over nearly a millennium. From modest origins, the Habsburgs gained control of the Holy Roman Empire in the fifteenth century. Then, in just a few decades, their possessions rapidly expanded to take in a large part of Europe, stretching from Hungary to Spain, and parts of the New World and the Far East. The Habsburgs continued to dominate Central Europe through the First World War. Historians often depict the Habsburgs as leaders of a ramshackle empire. But Rady reveals their enduring power, driven by the belief that they were destined to rule the world as defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, guarantors of peace, and patrons of learning. The Habsburgs is the definitive history of a remarkable dynasty that forever changed Europe and the world.
Author : Laurie Friedman
Publisher : Lerner Publishing Group
Page : 164 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2014-08-01
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9781467709415
April Sinclair just wants what any normal thirteen-year-old would want: to disown her parents and obnoxious little sisters; to escape to summer camp ASAP with her two best friends, Billy and Brynn; and to make a good impression on Matt Parker, the hot new boy next door. Unfortunately, Matt witnesses April's utter humiliation at her birthday party. Then Billy kisses her. Just as April is trying to figure things out, her parents cancel her camp plans in lieu of a family RV trip. A summer of babysitting her sisters and "re-bonding" with her family isn't how she imagined life as a teenager. And it certainly won?t help her straighten out her feelings about Billy or Matt. Is there any silver lining to a road trip in The Clunker with her family of misfits?
Author : Ann Marie Stephens
Publisher : Astra Publishing House
Page : 39 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2021-08-10
Category : Juvenile Fiction
ISBN : 9781635924671
Nine kittens go on an exciting boating adventure that's a (funny) CATastrophe in this playful picture book that demonstrates the key math concept of patterns. A crew of hungry kittens and their captain head to the lake to catch some dinner, but the fish have surprises in store for them. Physics is at work too. What happens when confused kitties paddle every which way? Or when they all lean in the same direction? A pattern is needed to avoid a catastrophe! Patterns are the foundation on which math is built. Using strong rhythm, clever wordplay, and countable characters, CATastrophe! is a fun read-aloud that also shows what patterns can do. Helpful backmatter will deepen readers' understanding and challenge them to find more patterns in this book and in our world.
Author : Frank O'Hara
Publisher : Grove Press
Page : 68 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1967
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0802134521
Originally published: New York: Grove Press, 1957.
Author : Judith Sierra-Rivera
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2018-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0814254950
A study of contexts of crisis, which examines the role of writers and intellectuals in working toward social justice.
Author : Warren Zimmermann
Publisher : Three Rivers Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Nationalism
ISBN : 0812933036
In this revised edition, Warren Zimmerman, the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, updates his prescient account of the catastrophe occurring in the Balkans. He provides an sightful analysis of what has happended in Bosnia since the Dayton accord, of the war and ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo, anf of why America had to become involved.
Author : J. Kael Weston
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 626 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2017-04-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9780345806949
A New York Times Editors' Choice A Military Times Best Book of the Year J. Kael Weston spent seven years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan working for the U.S. State Department. Upon returning home, traveling throughout the United States to pay his respects to the dead and wounded, he wondered what lessons, if any, could be learned from these wars. In this essential book, Weston questions, interprets, and explains our wars in the Middle East through a tapestry of voices—Iraqi, Afghan, and American—taking readers across California and Fallujah, Khost and Colorado. Along the way we meet generals, corporals, and captains, former Taliban fighters, Afghan schoolteachers, SEAL teams, imams, and many Marines. When will these wars end? How will they be remembered? Perhaps no one is better suited to tackle these important questions than Weston. The Mirror Test is an unflinching look at warfare and diplomacy, and a necessary reckoning with America’s actions abroad.
Author : Margaret Atwood
Publisher : Vintage Canada
Page : 513 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2010-07-27
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780307398925
From the Booker Prize–winning author of Oryx and Crake, the first book in the MaddAddam Trilogy, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Internationally acclaimed as ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by, amongst others, the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Village Voice In a world driven by shadowy, corrupt corporations and the uncontrolled development of new, gene-spliced life forms, a man-made pandemic occurs, obliterating human life. Two people find they have unexpectedly survived: Ren, a young dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails (the cleanest dirty girls in town), and Toby, solitary and determined, who has barricaded herself inside a luxurious spa, watching and waiting. The women have to decide on their next move—they can’t stay hidden forever. But is anyone else out there?
Author : Lawrence Wright
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 466 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2016-08-23
Category : History
ISBN : 9780385352079
With the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. Here, in ten powerful pieces first published in The New Yorker, he recalls the path that terror in the Middle East has taken, from the rise of al-Qaeda in the 1990s to the recent beheadings of reporters and aid workers by ISIS. The Terror Years draws on several articles he wrote while researching The Looming Tower, as well as many that he’s written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread. They include a portrait of the “man behind bin Laden,” Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the tumultuous Egypt he helped spawn; an indelible impression of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom of silence under the control of the religious police; the Syrian film industry, at the time compliant at the edges but already exuding a feeling of the barely masked fury that erupted into civil war; the 2006–11 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza, a study in the disparate value of human lives. Other chapters examine al-Qaeda as it forms a master plan for its future, experiences a rebellion from within the organization, and spins off a growing web of worldwide terror. The American response is covered in profiles of two FBI agents and the head of the intelligence community. The book ends with a devastating piece about the capture and slaying by ISIS of four American journalists and aid workers, and our government’s failed response. On the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, The Terror Years is at once a unifying recollection of the roots of contemporary Middle Eastern terrorism, a study of how it has grown and metastasized, and, in the scary and moving epilogue, a cautionary tale of where terrorism might take us yet.
Author : Raymond E. Feist
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 485 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2009-10-13
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780061758751
The master fantasist’s thrilling conclusion to The Darkwar Saga To save the future of both empires, the powerful sorcerer Pug and the Conclave of Shadows have journeyed into the darkest of terrain: the Dasati home world. There, traveling undercover among the bloodthirsty and ruthless Dasati, they have encountered Bek, a disturbing young stranger whose secrets may prove more important than Pug knows. And back in the realm of Midkemia, as the young warriors Tad, Zane, and their friends protect the Kingdom from raiders, Miranda finds herself a prisoner of the Dasati, and, even more ominously, of Pug’s nemesis, the evil sorcerer Leso Varen. And Pug finds himself allied with a friend thought long dead, a friend whose remarkable powers will be sorely needed in the battle to come . . . a battle that will bring them all together in one great struggle for the future and very soul of Midkemia.
Author : Mike Mariani
Publisher : Ballantine Books
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2023-08-01
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9780593236963
“A bold and intricate exploration of catastrophe as not just a transformative experience or a test case for resilience, but something that completely reinvents us—a reincarnation.”—Robert Kolker, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road “A masterpiece—a book that truly captures what it means to be changed by tragedy, and a necessary salve for our troubled times.”—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World and I Contain Multitudes “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” the adage—adapted from Nietzsche’s famous maxim—goes. But how much truth is there to that ubiquitous, inexhaustible saying? Tracing the lives of six people who have experienced profoundly life-changing events, journalist Mike Mariani explores the nuances and largely uncharted territory of what happens after one’s life is severed into a before and after. If what doesn’t kill us does not necessarily make us stronger, he asks, what does it make us? When his own life was transformed by the onset of a chronic illness, Mariani turned inward, changing his bustling, exuberant lifestyle into something more contemplative and deliberate. In this ambitious work of narrative reporting, he uses his own experience, as well as lessons from psychology, literature, mythology, and religion, to tell the stories of people living what he describes as “afterlives.” His subjects’ harrowing episodes range from a paralyzing car crash to a personality-altering traumatic brain injury to an accidental homicide that resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment. Their “afterlives,” Mariani argues, have compelled them to supercharge their identities, narrowing and deepening their focus to find a sense of meaning—whether through academia or religion or ministering to others—in lives sundered by tragedy. Only then can these people truly reinvent themselves, testifying to their own unseen multitudes and the valiant mutability of the human spirit. Delving into lives we rarely see in such meticulous detail—lives filled with struggle, loss, perseverance, transformation, and triumph—Mariani leads us into some of the darkest corners of human existence, only to reveal our endless capacity for kindling new light.