Litva: The Rise and Fall of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Litva: The Rise and Fall of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania PDF Author: Norman Davies
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101630825
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
The fascinating history of a Baltic empire’s dominance and decline—excerpted from internationally bestselling author Norman Davies’s Vanished Kingdoms Vanished Kingdoms introduces readers to once-powerful European empires that have left scant traces on the modern map. In this excerpt from his widely acclaimed book, Norman Davies tells the ill-fated story of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Founded in the mid-thirteenth century in one of the continent’s first settled regions, where the oldest of its Indo-European languages is spoken, the Grand Duchy at its peak was the largest country in Europe, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and it commanded yet greater influence after uniting with its western neighbor, the Kingdom of Poland, to form the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Grand Duchy’s huge territory included the great cities of Kiev, Vilnius, Riga, Minsk, and Brest. Despite being ahead of its time as an elective republic in an age of absolute monarchy, power struggles and foreign incursions led to its ultimate demise and forced partition by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in 1795. In this selection from a work The Boston Globe has called “commendably accessible, magisterial, and uncommonly humane,” Davies chronicles these rich yet unfamiliar chapters in the history of modern Lithuania, Belarus, and Latvia with his signature acuity and verve.

Litva

Litva PDF Author: Norman Davies
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781322800318
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives

The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspectives PDF Author: Paul Joseph
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1483359913
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 3831

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Book Description
Traditional explorations of war look through the lens of history and military science, focusing on big events, big battles, and big generals. By contrast, The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science Perspective views war through the lens of the social sciences, looking at the causes, processes and effects of war and drawing from a vast group of fields such as communication and mass media, economics, political science and law, psychology and sociology. Key features include: More than 650 entries organized in an A-to-Z format, authored and signed by key academics in the field Entries conclude with cross-references and further readings, aiding the researcher further in their research journeys An alternative Reader’s Guide table of contents groups articles by disciplinary areas and by broad themes A helpful Resource Guide directing researchers to classic books, journals and electronic resources for more in-depth study This important and distinctive work will be a key reference for all researchers in the fields of political science, international relations and sociology.

Counter-Reformation Sanctity in Global and Material Perspective

Counter-Reformation Sanctity in Global and Material Perspective PDF Author: Ruth Sargent Noyes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040224415
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book explores the making of saints’ cults in the early modern world from an interdisciplinary perspective, considering the entangled roles of materiality and globalization processes. It brings together work across diverse media, objects, and materials as well as communities, cultures, and geographies to reframe a more synoptic, materials-centric, and comparative history of the making and remaking of saints’ cults, with a special focus on the long Counter-Reformation. The contributions engage with dynamics of local and universal and draw attention to the vital role of textual, visual, and material hagiographies in the creation and promotion of saints’ and would-be saints’ cults. The book fosters novel conceptualizations and cross-pollination of ideas across traditions, regions, and disciplines and expands hagiography’s horizons by reconsidering canonical saintly figures and reframing lesser-known cults of saints and would-be saints. The book will be of interest to scholars of religious and early modern history as well as art history and visual and material studies.

Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600

Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600 PDF Author: Lars Kjaer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350183717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Gift-giving played an important role in political, social and religious life in medieval and early modern Europe. This volume explores an under-examined and often-overlooked aspect of this phenomenon: the material nature of the gift. Drawing on examples from both medieval and early modern Europe, the authors from the UK and across Europe explore the craftsmanship involved in the production of gifts and the use of exotic objects and animals, from elephant bones to polar bears and 'living' holy objects, to communicate power, class and allegiance. Gifts were publicly given, displayed and worn and so the book explores the ways in which, as tangible objects, gifts could help to construct religious and social worlds. But the beauty and material richness of the gift could also provoke anxieties. Classical and Christian authorities agreed that, in gift-giving, it was supposed to be the thought that counted and consequently wealth and grandeur raised worries about greed and corruption: was a valuable ring payment for sexual services or a token of love and a promise of marriage? Over three centuries, Gift-Giving and Materiality in Europe, 1300-1600: Gifts as Objects reflects on the possibilities, practicalities and concerns raised by the material character of gifts.

A Guest at the Shooters' Banquet

A Guest at the Shooters' Banquet PDF Author: Rita Gabis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632862611
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 467

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Book Description
In prose as beautiful as it is powerful, Rita Gabis follows the trail of her grandfather’s collaboration with the Nazis--a trail riddled with secrets, slaughter, mystery, and discovery. Rita Gabis comes from a family of Eastern European Jews and Lithuanian Catholics. She was close to her Catholic grandfather as a child and knew one version of his past: prior to immigration he had fought the Russians, whose brutal occupation of Lithuania destroyed thousands of lives before Hitler’s army swept in. Five years ago, Gabis discovered an unthinkable dimension to her family story: from 1941 to 1943, her grandfather had been the chief of security police under the Gestapo in the Lithuanian town of Svencionys, near the killing field of Poligon, where eight thousand Jews were murdered over three days in the fall of 1941. In 1942, the local Polish population was also hunted down. Gabis felt compelled to find out the complicated truth of who her grandfather was and what he had done. Built around dramatic interviews in four countries, filled with original scholarship, and mesmerizing in its lyricism, A Guest at the Shooters’ Banquet is a history and family memoir like no other, documenting "the holocaust by bullets" with a remarkable quest as Gabis returns again and again to the country of her grandfather’s birth to learn all she can about the man she thought she knew.

Motus mixti et compositi: The Portrayal of Mixed and Compound Emotions in the Visual and Literary Arts of Europe, 1500–1700

Motus mixti et compositi: The Portrayal of Mixed and Compound Emotions in the Visual and Literary Arts of Europe, 1500–1700 PDF Author: Karl A.E. Enenkel
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004694617
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description
This book examines deployments of mixed emotion in the literary and pictorial arts of early modern Europe. It consists of two parts, the first focusing on portrayals of mixed emotion in theatre, poetry, and prose, the second on forms and functions of mixed emotion in spiritual exercises centering on pictorial images, and on the heuristic and/or restorative functions of portraying mixed emotion. Contributors are Stijn Bussels, Tom Conley, Wietse de Boer, Carolin A. Giere, Barbara A. Kaminska, Graham R. Lea, Walter S. Melion, Mitchell Merback, Ruth Sargent Noyes, Bram Van Oostveldt, Raphaèle Preisinger, Bart Ramakers, Lukas Reddemann, Ludovica Sasso, Aline Smeesters, Paul J. Smith, Anita Traninger, and Elliott D. Wise.

No Simple Victory

No Simple Victory PDF Author: Norman Davies
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440651124
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
One of the world's leading historians re-examines World War II and its outcome A clear-eyed reappraisal of World War II that offers new insight by reevaluating well-established facts and pointing out lesser-known ones, No Simple Victory asks readers to reconsider what they know about the war, and how that knowledge might be biased or incorrect. Norman Davies poses simple questions that have unexpected answers: Can you name the five biggest battles of the war? What were the main political ideologies that were contending for supremacy? The answers to these questions will surprise even those who feel that they are experts on the subject. Davies has established himself as a preeminent scholar of World War II. No Simple Victory is an invaluable contribution to twentieth-century history and an illuminating portrait of a conflict that continues to provoke debate.

The Prospect Before Her: 1500-1800

The Prospect Before Her: 1500-1800 PDF Author: Olwen H. Hufton
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
History of women in western Europe during the years 1500 to 1800, discussing what females of various stations could expect at every stage of life from the time of their birth.

In the Shadows of Poland and Russia

In the Shadows of Poland and Russia PDF Author: Andrej Kotljarchuk
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lithuania
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description