The Age of Catastrophe

The Age of Catastrophe

Author: Heinrich August Winkler

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-01-01

Total Pages: 1013

ISBN-13: 0300204892

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One of Germany's leading historians presents an ambitious and masterful account of the years encompassing the two world wars Characterized by global war, political revolution and national crises, the period between 1914 and 1945 was one of the most horrifying eras in the history of the West. A noted scholar of modern German history, Heinrich August Winkler examines how and why Germany so radically broke with the normative project of the West and unleashed devastation across the world. In this total history of the thirty years between the start of World War One and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Winkler blends historical narrative with political analysis and encompasses military strategy, national identity, class conflict, economic development and cultural change. The book includes astutely observed chapters on the United States, Japan, Russia, Britain, and the other European powers, and Winkler's distinctly European perspective offers insights beyond the accounts written by his British and American counterparts. As Germany takes its place at the helm of a unified Europe, Winkler's fascinating account will be widely read and debated for years to come.


Book Synopsis The Age of Catastrophe by : Heinrich August Winkler

Download or read book The Age of Catastrophe written by Heinrich August Winkler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Germany's leading historians presents an ambitious and masterful account of the years encompassing the two world wars Characterized by global war, political revolution and national crises, the period between 1914 and 1945 was one of the most horrifying eras in the history of the West. A noted scholar of modern German history, Heinrich August Winkler examines how and why Germany so radically broke with the normative project of the West and unleashed devastation across the world. In this total history of the thirty years between the start of World War One and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Winkler blends historical narrative with political analysis and encompasses military strategy, national identity, class conflict, economic development and cultural change. The book includes astutely observed chapters on the United States, Japan, Russia, Britain, and the other European powers, and Winkler's distinctly European perspective offers insights beyond the accounts written by his British and American counterparts. As Germany takes its place at the helm of a unified Europe, Winkler's fascinating account will be widely read and debated for years to come.


The Age of Catastrophe

The Age of Catastrophe

Author: Heinrich August Winkler

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-09-28

Total Pages: 1013

ISBN-13: 0300213093

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Characterized by global war, political revolution and national crises, the period between 1914 and 1945 was one of the most horrifying eras in the history of the West. A noted scholar of modern German history, Heinrich August Winkler examines how and why Germany so radically broke with the normative project of the West and unleashed devastation across the world. In this total history of the thirty years between the start of World War One and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Winkler blends historical narrative with political analysis and encompasses military strategy, national identity, class conflict, economic development and cultural change. The book includes astutely observed chapters on the United States, Japan, Russia, Britain, and the other European powers, and Winkler’s distinctly European perspective offers insights beyond the accounts written by his British and American counterparts. As Germany takes its place at the helm of a unified Europe, Winkler’s fascinating account will be widely read and debated for years to come.


Book Synopsis The Age of Catastrophe by : Heinrich August Winkler

Download or read book The Age of Catastrophe written by Heinrich August Winkler and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-28 with total page 1013 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Characterized by global war, political revolution and national crises, the period between 1914 and 1945 was one of the most horrifying eras in the history of the West. A noted scholar of modern German history, Heinrich August Winkler examines how and why Germany so radically broke with the normative project of the West and unleashed devastation across the world. In this total history of the thirty years between the start of World War One and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Winkler blends historical narrative with political analysis and encompasses military strategy, national identity, class conflict, economic development and cultural change. The book includes astutely observed chapters on the United States, Japan, Russia, Britain, and the other European powers, and Winkler’s distinctly European perspective offers insights beyond the accounts written by his British and American counterparts. As Germany takes its place at the helm of a unified Europe, Winkler’s fascinating account will be widely read and debated for years to come.


The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe

The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe

Author: Stefanos Geroulanos

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-08-13

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 022655662X

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The injuries suffered by soldiers during WWI were as varied as they were brutal. How could the human body suffer and often absorb such disparate traumas? Why might the same wound lead one soldier to die but allow another to recover? In The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers uncover a fascinating story of how medical scientists came to conceptualize the body as an integrated yet brittle whole. Responding to the harrowing experience of the Great War, the medical community sought conceptual frameworks to understand bodily shock, brain injury, and the vast differences in patient responses they occasioned. Geroulanos and Meyers carefully trace how this emerging constellation of ideas became essential for thinking about integration, individuality, fragility, and collapse far beyond medicine: in fields as diverse as anthropology, political economy, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics. Moving effortlessly between the history of medicine and intellectual history, The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe is an intriguing look into the conceptual underpinnings of the world the Great War ushered in.


Book Synopsis The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe by : Stefanos Geroulanos

Download or read book The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe written by Stefanos Geroulanos and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-08-13 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The injuries suffered by soldiers during WWI were as varied as they were brutal. How could the human body suffer and often absorb such disparate traumas? Why might the same wound lead one soldier to die but allow another to recover? In The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers uncover a fascinating story of how medical scientists came to conceptualize the body as an integrated yet brittle whole. Responding to the harrowing experience of the Great War, the medical community sought conceptual frameworks to understand bodily shock, brain injury, and the vast differences in patient responses they occasioned. Geroulanos and Meyers carefully trace how this emerging constellation of ideas became essential for thinking about integration, individuality, fragility, and collapse far beyond medicine: in fields as diverse as anthropology, political economy, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics. Moving effortlessly between the history of medicine and intellectual history, The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe is an intriguing look into the conceptual underpinnings of the world the Great War ushered in.


Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution

Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution

Author: Sherry Johnson

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2011-11-14

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780807869345

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From 1750 to 1800, a critical period that saw the American Revolution, French Revolution, and Haitian Revolution, the Atlantic world experienced a series of environmental crises, including more frequent and severe hurricanes and extended drought. Drawing on historical climatology, environmental history, and Cuban and American colonial history, Sherry Johnson innovatively integrates the region's experience with extreme weather events and patterns into the history of the Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic world. By superimposing this history of natural disasters over the conventional timeline of sociopolitical and economic events in Caribbean colonial history, Johnson presents an alternative analysis in which some of the signal events of the Age of Revolution are seen as consequences of ecological crisis and of the resulting measures for disaster relief. For example, Johnson finds that the general adoption in 1778 of free trade in the Americas was catalyzed by recognition of the harsh realities of food scarcity and the needs of local colonists reeling from a series of natural disasters. Weather-induced environmental crises and slow responses from imperial authorities, Johnson argues, played an inextricable and, until now, largely unacknowledged role in the rise of revolutionary sentiments in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.


Book Synopsis Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution by : Sherry Johnson

Download or read book Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution written by Sherry Johnson and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-11-14 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1750 to 1800, a critical period that saw the American Revolution, French Revolution, and Haitian Revolution, the Atlantic world experienced a series of environmental crises, including more frequent and severe hurricanes and extended drought. Drawing on historical climatology, environmental history, and Cuban and American colonial history, Sherry Johnson innovatively integrates the region's experience with extreme weather events and patterns into the history of the Spanish Caribbean and the Atlantic world. By superimposing this history of natural disasters over the conventional timeline of sociopolitical and economic events in Caribbean colonial history, Johnson presents an alternative analysis in which some of the signal events of the Age of Revolution are seen as consequences of ecological crisis and of the resulting measures for disaster relief. For example, Johnson finds that the general adoption in 1778 of free trade in the Americas was catalyzed by recognition of the harsh realities of food scarcity and the needs of local colonists reeling from a series of natural disasters. Weather-induced environmental crises and slow responses from imperial authorities, Johnson argues, played an inextricable and, until now, largely unacknowledged role in the rise of revolutionary sentiments in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.


The Time of Catastrophe

The Time of Catastrophe

Author: Christopher Dole

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1317013867

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If catastrophes are, by definition, exceptional events of such magnitude that worlds and lives are dramatically overturned, the question of timing would pose a seemingly straightforward, if not redundant question. The Time of Catastrophe demonstrates the analytic productiveness of this question, arguing that there is much to be gained by interrogating the temporal conceits of conventional understandings of catastrophe and the catastrophic. Bringing together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars, the book develops a critical language for examining 'catastrophic time', recognizing the central importance of, and offering a set of frameworks for, examining the alluring and elusive qualities of catastrophe. Framed around the ideas of Agamben, Kant and Benjamin, and drawing on philosophy, history, law, political science, anthropology and the arts, this volume seeks to demonstrate how the question of 'catastrophic time' is in fact a question about something much more than the frequency of disasters in our so-called 'Age of Catastrophe'.


Book Synopsis The Time of Catastrophe by : Christopher Dole

Download or read book The Time of Catastrophe written by Christopher Dole and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If catastrophes are, by definition, exceptional events of such magnitude that worlds and lives are dramatically overturned, the question of timing would pose a seemingly straightforward, if not redundant question. The Time of Catastrophe demonstrates the analytic productiveness of this question, arguing that there is much to be gained by interrogating the temporal conceits of conventional understandings of catastrophe and the catastrophic. Bringing together a distinguished, interdisciplinary group of scholars, the book develops a critical language for examining 'catastrophic time', recognizing the central importance of, and offering a set of frameworks for, examining the alluring and elusive qualities of catastrophe. Framed around the ideas of Agamben, Kant and Benjamin, and drawing on philosophy, history, law, political science, anthropology and the arts, this volume seeks to demonstrate how the question of 'catastrophic time' is in fact a question about something much more than the frequency of disasters in our so-called 'Age of Catastrophe'.


Global Crisis

Global Crisis

Author: Geoffrey Parker

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-03-15

Total Pages: 944

ISBN-13: 0300189192

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The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century. Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. In this meticulously researched volume, historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who experienced the many political, economic, and social crises that occurred between 1618 to the late 1680s. He also incorporates the scientific evidence of climate change during this period into the narrative, offering a strikingly new understanding of the General Crisis. Changes in weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.


Book Synopsis Global Crisis by : Geoffrey Parker

Download or read book Global Crisis written by Geoffrey Parker and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century. Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. In this meticulously researched volume, historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who experienced the many political, economic, and social crises that occurred between 1618 to the late 1680s. He also incorporates the scientific evidence of climate change during this period into the narrative, offering a strikingly new understanding of the General Crisis. Changes in weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.


Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler

Author: Robert Gellately

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2009-11-11

Total Pages: 720

ISBN-13: 0307537129

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A bold new accounting of the great social and political upheavals that enveloped Europe between 1914 and 1945—from the Russian Revolution through the Second World War. In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ideological nature. Arguing that the tragedies endured by Europe were inextricably linked through the dictatorships of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, Gellately explains how the pursuit of their “utopian” ideals turned into dystopian nightmares. Dismantling the myth of Lenin as a relatively benevolent precursor to Hitler and Stalin and contrasting the divergent ways that Hitler and Stalin achieved their calamitous goals, Gellately creates in Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler a vital analysis of a critical period in modern history.


Book Synopsis Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler by : Robert Gellately

Download or read book Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler written by Robert Gellately and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-11-11 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new accounting of the great social and political upheavals that enveloped Europe between 1914 and 1945—from the Russian Revolution through the Second World War. In Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, acclaimed historian Robert Gellately focuses on the dominant powers of the time, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but also analyzes the catastrophe of those years in an effort to uncover its political and ideological nature. Arguing that the tragedies endured by Europe were inextricably linked through the dictatorships of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, Gellately explains how the pursuit of their “utopian” ideals turned into dystopian nightmares. Dismantling the myth of Lenin as a relatively benevolent precursor to Hitler and Stalin and contrasting the divergent ways that Hitler and Stalin achieved their calamitous goals, Gellately creates in Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler a vital analysis of a critical period in modern history.


Doom

Doom

Author: Niall Ferguson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 0593297385

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"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.


Book Synopsis Doom by : Niall Ferguson

Download or read book Doom written by Niall Ferguson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.


The End of the Bronze Age

The End of the Bronze Age

Author: Robert Drews

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-03-31

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0691209979

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The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century b.c. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a period of several decades, destruction descended upon key cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years. In his attempt to account for this destruction, Robert Drews rejects the traditional explanations and proposes a military one instead.


Book Synopsis The End of the Bronze Age by : Robert Drews

Download or read book The End of the Bronze Age written by Robert Drews and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century b.c. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a period of several decades, destruction descended upon key cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years. In his attempt to account for this destruction, Robert Drews rejects the traditional explanations and proposes a military one instead.


The Age of Crisis

The Age of Crisis

Author: Alfredo Saad-Filho

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-27

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 3030816087

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This book offers an analysis of the causes, development, and likely consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for global neoliberalism. The analysis will draw upon the author’s previous work on neoliberalism, and on its twin crises: the economic crisis (the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), ongoing since 2007) and, subsequently, the crisis of political democracy that has been associated with the rise of ‘spectacular’ authoritarian leaders in several countries. The approach is grounded on Marxist political economy. The book argues that the Covid-19 pandemic emerges out of this context of deep inequalities and crises in the economy and in politics, and it is likely to reinforce the exclusionary tendencies of neoliberalism, with detrimental implications both for economic prosperity and for democracy. In turn, the pandemic has revealed the limitations of neoliberalism like never before, with implications for the legitimacy of capitalism itself, and opening unprecedented spaces for the left. This book will be of interest to academics in economics, international relations, political science, political economy, sociology and development studies.


Book Synopsis The Age of Crisis by : Alfredo Saad-Filho

Download or read book The Age of Crisis written by Alfredo Saad-Filho and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an analysis of the causes, development, and likely consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for global neoliberalism. The analysis will draw upon the author’s previous work on neoliberalism, and on its twin crises: the economic crisis (the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), ongoing since 2007) and, subsequently, the crisis of political democracy that has been associated with the rise of ‘spectacular’ authoritarian leaders in several countries. The approach is grounded on Marxist political economy. The book argues that the Covid-19 pandemic emerges out of this context of deep inequalities and crises in the economy and in politics, and it is likely to reinforce the exclusionary tendencies of neoliberalism, with detrimental implications both for economic prosperity and for democracy. In turn, the pandemic has revealed the limitations of neoliberalism like never before, with implications for the legitimacy of capitalism itself, and opening unprecedented spaces for the left. This book will be of interest to academics in economics, international relations, political science, political economy, sociology and development studies.