Libros de Historia de los países de Europa, página 11 de 109

Russia is a country of contradictions: a nation of cultural refinement and artistic originality and yet also a country that rules by 'the iron fist', with an ingrained eagerness to sacrifice the individual for the collectivist cause. In this riveting history, Martin Sixsmith shows how Russia's complex identity has been formed over a thousand years, and how it can help us understand its often baffling behaviour at home and abroad. Combining in-depth research with his personal experiences as BBC Moscow correspondent for many years, Sixsmith tells Russia's full and fascinating story, from its foundation in the last years of the tenth century to the first years of the twenty-first, skilfully tracing the conundrums of modern Russia to their roots in its troubled past. Covering politics, music, literature and art, he explores the myths Russians have created from their history, and explains the nation's seemingly split personality as the result of influences that have divided it for centuries. Accompanying a landmark BBC Radio 4 series, and marking the 20th anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR, Russia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex political landscape of Russia, and its unique place in the modern world.

El objetivo de Preguntando entre lágrimas es ofrecer una alternativa al lenguaje periodístico. Un libro en el que Peter Handke tiene una percepción diferente del mundo, que pretende contrarrestar la avalancha de imágenes que obnubila al lector de periódicos y al espectador de informativos televisivos. El relato de los dos viajes que Handke emprende en la primavera de 1999, y que lo llevan a la zona de combate, no presenta un recuento de las operaciones bélicas, ni acusa a los participantes de la catástrofe. Los textos elaborados a partir de las visitas a la entonces República de Yugoslavia atacada por la OTAN entonan un contenido lamento de la destrucción. La maraña de desinformación, medias verdades y mentiras que rodea las guerras balcánicas resulto poco menos que impenetrable. Sin embargo, no es aventurado afirmar que esta maraña y el bajísimo nivel del debate sobre la toma de partido de Handke son, en gran medida, fruto de una "ignorancia intencional", como lo denomina Chomsky.

Ni grand ni petit historien, tout au plus historien du dimanche - au sens ou Levinas parlait des talmudistes du dimanche - Alain Minc se risque ici a nous raconter son histoire personnelle de la France, de la Gaule du IVeme siecle jusqua lelection de Nicolas Sarkozy. Promeneur de lHistoire, il sautorise tout ce que sinterdisent les historiens professionnels : rompre les enchainements de faits, chercher des comparaisons dans le present pour expliquer le passe (peche d anachronisme ), reperer les recurrences plutot que lunite des evenements, etablir sa propre hierarchie des grands carrefours, des nuds, des points de bascule de notre roman national, au mepris de la linearite du temps et des verites etablies, imaginer ce qui aurait pu se passer differemment (peche d histoire-fiction ). Cette histoire personnelle de la France est donc portee par des partis pris, une forme assumee de superficialite et des choix par definition contestables. Ce nest pas manque de respect aux maitres de cette discipline que de se lancer dans une telle aventure. Alain Minc le fait avec la benediction posthume de Fernand Braudel qui lui avait murmure il y a vingt-cinq ans : Ecrivez une histoire de France : il ny a pas de plus bel exercice intellectuel. Nayez pas peur des historiens : ils ont besoin que lon braconne sur leurs terres .

Este libro recoge las actas de las Jornadas de Estudios Históricos organizadas por el Dpto. de Historia Medieval, Moderna y de América de la Universidad del País Vasco en 2005. Sus autores son profesores e investigadores de distintos centros, que analizan problemas y procesos históricos relacionados con la religión y la Iglesia en Europa y América entre los siglos medievales y la época contemporánea. La variedad de los temas estudiados y los diferentes ámbitos cronológicos y espaciales proporcionan una amplia visión de los procesos y ofrecen la oportunidad de conocer diversos enfoques metodológicos.

A diez años de su publicación en lengua italiana (Bari, Cacucci Editore, 2000) aparece ahora en castellano el volumen de Amedeo Lepore. Un trabajo que ha tenido muy buena acogida por su innegable interes no solo para la historiografia española y, particularmente, de Cadiz, sino, en general, para el mejor conocimiento del comercio internacional desarrollado bajo el impulso del primer capitalismo a escala mundial.

Finest years Churchill as Warlord. Pre-eminent military historian Max Hastings presents Winston Churchill as he has never been seen before. Winston Churchill was the greatest war leader Britain ever had. In 1940, the nation rallied behind him in an extraordinary fashion. But thereafter, argues Max Hastings, there was a deep divide between what Churchill wanted from the British people and their army, and what they were capable of delivering. Himself a hero, he expected others to show themselves heroes also, and was often disappointed. It is little understood how low his popularity fell in 1942, amid an unbroken succession of battlefield defeats. Some of his closest colleagues joined a clamour for him to abandon his role directing the war machine. Hastings paints a wonderfully vivid image of the Prime Minister in triumph and tragedy. He describes the second Dunkirk in 1940, when Churchills impulsiveness threatened to lose Britain almost as many troops in north-west France as had been saved from the beaches; his wooing of the Americans, and struggles with the Russians. British wartime unity was increasingly tarnished by workers unrest, with many strikes in mines and key industries. By looking at Churchill from the outside in, through the eyes of British soldiers, civilians and newspapers - and also those of Russians and Americans - Hastings provides new perspectives on the greatest Englishman. He condemns as folly Churchills attempt to promote mass uprisings in occupied Europe, and details Unthinkable - his amazing 1945 plan for an Allied offensive against the Russians to liberate Poland. Here is an intimate and affectionate portrait of Churchill as Britains saviour, but also an unsparing examination of the wartime nation which he led and the performance of its armed forces.

In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes killed fourteen million people in certain borderlands between Berlin and Moscow. In these bloodlands, today's Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the eastern Baltic coast, an average of more than a million civilians were killed annually by the Nazi and Soviet regimes during twelve years that both Hitler and Stalin were in power, from 1933 to 1944. Together Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union ruled most of the Eurasian landmass, but they killed chiefly, indeed almost entirely, in the bloodlands. Beyond the bloodlands, the regimes of Hitler and Stalin together, in their vast domains from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, deliberately killed no more than three million civilians in these years. If the compact area of the bloodlands is included, the figure rises to seventeen million souls.The centre of gravity of modern European history is here, in the frontier zones and lands between states advocating European ideologies, who assaulted European peoples, and eradicated an established European order.The center of gravity of modern European history is a black hole.Today Stalin's crimes are associated with Russia, and Hitler's with Germany: these countries were not the main sites of mass killing. People were killed in the lands between, where most of Europe's Jews lived, where Hitler and Stalin's plans overlapped, and where the Wehrmacht and the Red Army fought, and where the Soviet NKVD and the German SS concentrated their forces.

Con un prólogo escrito especialmente por el reconocido historiador para esta edición en español, Siglo XXI presenta este nuevo trabajo de Peter Frietzsche - quien escribió el sorprendente De alemanes a nazis- que muestra el complejo dialogo establecido entre la gran Berlin de comienzos del siglo XX y los textos de la epoca que hablan de ella y que organizan la experiencia de los lectores. La hasta entonces tranquila capital del Imperio se transformo en una metropoli densa, abigarrada y agitada. Fabricas, barriadas populares, tranvias y espectaculos deportivos son parte del crecimiento de una ciudad marcada por el movimiento, la agitacion y la sorpresa. Los grandes periodicos populares testimonian la presencia de un nuevo y masivo publico lector, y de un tipo de lectura voraz y fragmentaria. "Peter Fritzsche ha escrito un fascinante estudio sobre los años anteriores a Weimar y el nazismo, que combina la dimension urbana con la textual y explora, de manera original, las interrelaciones entre una sociedad popular en proceso de cambio y la construccion de su imaginario a traves de la prensa"