Author: Edward Behr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Behr's probing analysis of the historical roots of the Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania goes a long way toward explaining the pathological behavior characterizing the rule of t̀̀he communist Dracula'' and why his regime endured. À̀ man like me, '' Nicolae Ceausescu boasted, c̀̀omes along only once every five hundred years.'' Behr ( Hirohito ) makes clear what manner of man Ceausescu was, how he ruled his country and the important role his wife, Elena, played in the regime. The picture that comes into focus is that of an evil-minded, paranoid and petty couple, at once canny and stupid, who relied on a huge state security apparatus, the Securitate , to spread fear among their extraordinarily submissive subjects. The book includes a full account of the popular uprising in December 1989 and the arrest, trial and execution of the Ceausescus. Behr notes that the bulk of the officers and officials of the Securitate remain in place; thus the dead ''Dracula'' continues to cast his shadow over the land. This is a rare close look at one of the most grotesque of the Communist personality cults.--
Author: Michael Malice
Publisher: Michael Malice
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
The Russian Revolution was as red as blood. The Bolsheviks promised that they were building a new society, a workers’ paradise that would change the nature of mankind itself. What they ended up constructing was the largest prison that the world had ever seen, a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that spanned half the globe. It was a country where people's lives meant nothing, less than nothing—and they knew it. But no matter what atrocity that the Soviets committed—the secret police, the torture chambers, the show trials, the labor camps and the mass starvation—there was always someone in the West rushing to justify their bloodshed. For decades it seemed perfectly obvious that the USSR wasn’t going anywhere—until it vanished from the face of the earth, gradually and then suddenly. This is the story of the rise and fall of that evil empire, and why it is so important for the good to never give up hope. This is the white pill.
Author: Dennis Deletant
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315481553
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 388
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Book Description
First Published in 2017. This book contains Deletant's research and view that an inescapable feature of life in Romania under Ceausescu was the ubiquity of the Securitate or the security police, known officially for much of the period as the Department of State Security of the Ministry of the Interior. He seeks to right the omission in Romanian literature, until now, of the mechanism of terror which Stalin used in Romania to enforce his will and about the organisation of the Department of State Security.
Author: Stephen Arnott
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429953292
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
Peculiar Proverbs is a hilarious and enlightening collection of genuine proverbs from around the world that ignores the sayings we are all familiar with and focuses on the more obscure. Some are deft, witty, and colorful, others are just plain weird, but they are all fascinating. The proverbs are grouped in topics ranging from work (or reasons not to), family life, love, food, age, religion, money, and many more. Humor and wisdom characterize these bizarre and quirky sayings, and they reveal much about their countries of origin, and plenty about human nature. Peculiar Proverbs includes sayings you won't find in any other collection, sometimes so surreal they defy you to decipher them, providing hours of entertainment. Remember: The man who tickles himself can laugh when he chooses. *Dogs and rude people have no hands (Italy) *God preserve us from pitchforks, for they make three holes (Switzerland) *It is not necessary for priests to marry as long as peasants have wives (Germany) *A mother-in-law, like the yucca tree, is useful underground (Cuba) *Better the gurgling of a camel than the prayers of a fish (Egypt) *Give a dog an appetizing name, and eat him (China) *There are two good people: one of them is dead, and the other one was not born (Estonia) *Mediocrity is climbing a molehill without sweating (Iceland) *You cannot drink water, it is not vodka (Russia) *A cow pat is wider when trodden on (Ireland)
Author: Alexander Margulis
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476609578
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 497
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Book Description
This dictionary contains 2,375 Russian sayings and proverbs and their English counterparts. Variants of each saying are included, and careful attention is given to the differences in British and American versions. For example, the Russian saying that is interpreted as "Children behave in a childish way, and they cannot be expected to act like grown-up people," is first given in Russian (in the Cyrillic alphabet) and then in English, and is then followed by the nearest English-language equivalent sayings in Britain and the United States: "Young colts will canter" (British) and "Boys will be boys" (American). The proverbs and sayings are arranged alphabetically by the first Russian word (in the Cyrillic alphabet) and are cross-referenced so the reader can find analogous Russian versions of English sayings. There is a keyword index for each language (one in English, one in Russian in the Cyrillic alphabet), which allows the reader to find a proverb or a saying without knowing the first word. Proverbs and sayings are current and include those popular in both spoken Russian and literature. The prefatory matter is in both English and Russian, for readers who have a command of either language.
Author: Jon R. Stone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135870535
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 947
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Book Description
The Routledge Book of World Proverbs invites the reader to travel the globe in search of the origins of such words of wisdom, experiencing the rich cultural traditions reflected in each nation’s proverbs. This collection contains over 16,000 gems of humour and pathos that draw upon themes from our shared experiences of life. And we are not just invited to learn about other cultures; proverbs are ‘bits of ancient wisdom’ and thus teach us about our own history. Drawing together proverbs that transcend culture, time and space to provide a collection that is both useful and enjoyable, The Routledge Book of World Proverbs is, unquestionably, a book of enduring interest.
Author: Peter Siani-Davies
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801473890
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
The Romanian Revolution of 1989 was the most spectacularly violent and remains today the most controversial of all the East European upheavals of that year. Despite (or perhaps because of) the media attention the revolution received, it remains shrouded in mystery. How did the seemingly impregnable Ceausescu regime come to be toppled so swiftly and how did Ion Iliescu and the National Salvation Front come to power? Was it by coup d'état? Who were the mysterious "terrorists" who wreaked such havoc on the streets of Bucharest and the other major cities of Romania? Were they members of the notorious securitate? What was the role of the Soviet Union?Blending narrative with analysis, Peter Siani-Davies seeks to answer these and other questions while placing the events and their immediate aftermath within a wider context. Based on fieldwork conducted in Romania and drawing heavily on Romanian sources, including television and radio transcripts, official documents, newspaper reports, and interviews, this book is the most thorough study of the Romanian Revolution that has appeared in English or any other major European language.Recognizing that a definitive history of these events may be impossible, Siani-Davies focuses on the ways in which participants interpreted the events according to particular scripts and myths of revolution rooted in the Romanian historical experience. In the process the author sheds light on the ways in which history and the conflicting retellings of the 1989 events are put to political use in the transitional societies of Eastern Europe.
Author: Gary Indiana
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1644211637
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 293
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Book Description
“One of the most important chroniclers of the modern psyche.” —The Guardian The novelist, cultural critic, and indie icon serves up sometimes bitchy, always generous, erudite, and joyful assessments from the last thirty-five years of cutting edge film, art, and literature. Whether he’s describing Tracy Emin or Warhol, the films of Barbet Schroeder (“Schroeder is well aware that life is not a narrative; that we impose form on the movements of chance, contingency, and impulse....”) or the installations of Barbara Kruger (“Kruger compresses the telling exchanges of lived experience that betray how skewed our lives are…”), Indiana is never just describing. His writing is refreshing, erudite, joyful. Indiana champions shining examples of literary and artistic merit regardless of whether the individual artist or writer is famous; asserts a standard of care and tradition that has nothing to do with the ivory tower establishment; is unafraid to deliver the coup de grâce when someone needs to say the emperor has no clothes; speaks in the same breath—in the same discerning, insolent, eloquent way—about high art and pop culture. Few writers could get away with saying the things Gary Indiana does. And when the writing is this good, it’s also political, plus it’s a riot of fun on the page. Here is Gary Indiana on Euro Disney resort park in Marne-la-Valée outside of Paris: John Berger compares the art of Disney to that of Francis Bacon. He says that the same essential horror lurks in both, and that it springs from the viewer’s imagining: There is nothing else. Even as a child, I understood how unbearable it would be to be trapped inside a cartoon frame.
Author: Valerie Strong
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1453592067
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
This memoir takes the reader through childhood travel with an independent mother before World War II, to England, Barbados and France and on to adventures in Greece and Ohio which include animals, children and a Greek mother-in-law, concluding with the death of her father in 1985. The book starts with her childhood in Canada. Trips by steamship with her mother are described ending with fl ight from France just before the German occupati on and the perilous convoy back to the safety of Canada. The Canadian school, subsequent college and scholarship to France end in marriage to a Greek student. Aft er his appointment as history professor at Hiram College in Ohio she follows him through scholarships and grants to Madison Wisconsin, Brussels Belgium, Washington D.C. and the Gennadius library in Athens Greece. This book is insightf ul and humorous in the portrayal of travel and the mingling of families of diff erent backgrounds. Her life was infl uenced by two powerful women, her mother and her mother-in-law. Although from diff erent cultures, these women were ahead of their ti mes; strong willed and courageous. Subconsciously these women prepared her to carry on aft er the devastati ng end of her marriage and the unexpected death of her mother. When she found it diffi cult to make ends meet their example encouraged her to take successful rug buying trips to Iran and Turkey and later to start a career as a landscape designer. Aft er her father’s death she became a landscape designer, studying in Ohio, England and France. Some of her experiences in Northeast Ohio are recorded in All My Phlox, published by Kent University Press, 1999
Author: Olen Steinhauer
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1429974745
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
From the author of New York Times bestseller The Tourist... The revolutionary politics and chaotic history of life inside Olen Steinhauer's fictionalized Eastern European country have made his literary crime series, with its two Edgar Award nominations along with other critical acclaim, one of today's most acclaimed. Finally having reached the tumultuous 1980s, the series comes full circle as one of the earliest cases of the People's Militia reemerges to torment all of the inspectors, including Emil Brod, now the chief, who was the original detective on the case. His arrest of one of the country's revolutionary leaders in the late 1940s resulted in the politician's conviction and imprisonment, but Emil was too young in those days to understand what it meant to go up against someone so powerful—and win. Only now, in 1989, when he is days from retirement and spends more time looking over his shoulder than ahead, does he realize that what he did may get him—and others—killed. Told against the backdrop of the crumbling forty-year-old government—with the leaders who were so new in the series debut, The Bridge of Sighs—Victory Square is Steinhauer at his best. Once again he masterfully makes crime fiction both personal and political, combining a story of revenge at any cost with a portrait of a country on the brink of collapse.
