With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy was thought to be absolute. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. But we now know this to be premature. Authoritarianism first returned in Russia, as Putin developed a political system dedicated solely to the consolidation and exercise of power. In the last six years, it has creeped from east to west as nationalism inflames Europe, abetted by Russian propaganda and cyberwarfare. While countries like Poland and Hungary have made hard turns towards authoritarianism, the electoral upsets of 2016 revealed the citizens of the US and UK in revolt against their countries’ longstanding policies and values.But this threat to the West also presents the opportunity to better understand the pillars of our own political order. In this forceful and unsparing work of contemporary history, Snyder goes beyond the headlines to expose the true nature of the threat to democracy. By showcasing the st
You can count on Rick Steves to tell you what you really need to know when traveling in Eastern Europeincluding the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia.Explore Eastern Eur
Violence against women is a growing problem. With examples from Denmark, France, Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the contributors to this volume explore how violence is
'To portray the Holocaust, one has to create a work of art', says Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah. However, can the Holocaust be turned into theatre? Is it possible to portray on stage events that, by their monstrosity, defy human comprehension? These are the questions addressed by the playwrights and the scholars featured in this book. Their essays present and analyse plays performed in Israel, America, France, Italy, Poland and, of course, Germany. The style of presentation ranges from docudramas to avant-garde performances, from realistic impersonation of historical figures to provocative and nightmarish spectacles. The book is illustrated with original production photographs and some rare drawings and documents; it also contains an important descriptive bibliography of more than two hundred Holocaust plays.
When East Germany collapsed in 1989–1990, outside observers were shocked to learn the extent of environmental devastation that existed there. The communist dictatorship, however, had sought to confront environmental issues since at least the 1960s. Through an analysis of official and oppositional sources, Saving Nature Under Socialism complicates attitudes toward the environment in East Germany by tracing both domestic and transnational engagement with nature and pollution. The communist dictatorship limited opportunities for protest, so officials and activists looked abroad to countries such as Poland and West Germany for inspiration and support. Julia Ault outlines the evolution of environmental policy and protest in East Germany and shows how East Germans responded to local degradation as well as to an international moment of environmental reckoning in the 1970s and 1980s. The example of East Germany thus challenges and broadens our understanding of the 'greening' of post-war Europe
The volume brings together papers related to different aspects of classroom-oriented research on teaching and learning second and foreign languages that have been authored by specialists from Poland a
In this book, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann chronicles more than three hundred years of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Ukraine, Lit
Pura Belpré Award Winner Ruth Behar's inspiring story of a young Jewish girl who escapes Poland to make a new life in Cuba, while she works to rescue the rest of her familyThe situation is getting dire for Jews in Poland on the eve of World War II. Esther's father has fled to Cuba, and she is the first one to join him. It's heartbreaking to be separated from her beloved sister, so Esther promises to write down everything that happens until they're reunited. And she does, recording both the good--the kindness of the Cuban people and her discovery of a valuable hidden talent--and the bad: the fact that Nazism has found a foothold even in Cuba. Esther's evocative letters are full of her appreciation for life and reveal a resourceful, determined girl with a rare ability to bring people together, all the while striving to get the rest of their family out of Poland before it's too late.Based on Ruth Behar's family history, this compelling story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit i
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, TPDL 2015, held in Poznan, Poland, in September 2015.The 22 full papers and 14 p
Anita Lobel was barely five years old when World War II began and the Nazis burst into her home in Kraków, Poland. Her life changed forever. She spent her childhood in hiding with her brother an
From 1250 to 1795 Lithuania covered a vast area of eastern and central Europe. Until 1387 the country was pagan. How this huge state came to expand, defend itself against western European crusaders and play a conspicuous part in European life are the main subjects of this book. Chapters are devoted to the types of sources used, to the religion of the ancient Balts (and the discovery of a pagan temple in Vilnius in the late 1980s), and to Lithuanian relations and wars with Poland and the Germans. Under Grand Duke Gediminas, Lithuania came to control more of Russia than the prince of Moscow and, though pagan, competed with Moscow to gain a special church structure. Many of the general crises in this book have a familiar ring: crusade, famine, collapse of central authority in the German empire and the papacy. In this deeply-researched study, first published in 1994, the middle ages emerge as interesting and as varied as our own times.
Six European socialist states - Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Rumania and the Soviet Union - announced the establishment of CMEA in January, 1949. Each CMEA country has the centrally planned economy of the socialist state, with the check on the free movement of prices that a deliberate planning policy provides. This book discusses what determines the movement of resources in the CMEA economy and what role the price system plays. Professor Hewitt concludes that the price system resulted in price changes causing a significant deterioration in Soviet-East European terms of trade during the 1960s. He finds little evidence that prices have influenced actual trade flows, and believes economic reforms in some East European countries could eventually lead to a much greater influence of CMEA foreign trade prices. This book discusses the major proposals to reform the price system and shows how debates on that matter have naturally led into debates on reforming all intra-CMEA econom
Following three teenagers who chose to spend one school year living and learning in Finland, South Korea and Poland, a literary journalist, through their adventures, discovers startling truths about h
Oflag 64, a World War II prisoner of war (POW) camp based in Schubin, Poland, was speculated to be one of the only POW camps set up exclusively for U.S. Army ground component officers. About 150 Ameri
Andrei thought they were strange as far as Americans went. He'd picked them up in his cab outside the Kaliningrad airport to drive them over the border to Reszel, Poland. They resembled the basic unit
In 1934, eleven-year-old Shimon Peres emigrated to the land of Israel from his native Poland, leaving behind an extended family who would later be murdered in the Holocaust. Few back then would have p
HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH - THE TIMES One night in autumn 1944, a gunshot echoes through the alleyways of a small town in occupied Poland. An S.S. officer is shot dead by a young Polish Jew
The Silesian Museum in Katowice, Poland, was created to display the material, artistic and spiritual culture of this historic region, which encompasses parts of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic.
