How to Ruin a Queen: Marie Antoinette, the Stolen Diamonds and the Scandal That Shook the French Throne by Jonathan Beckman

$12.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

'A hell of a tale and Jonathan Beckman gives it all the verve and swagger it deserves ...I read it with fascination, delight and frequent snorts of incredulity' The Spectator On 5 September 1785, a trial began in Paris that would divide the country, captivate Europe and send the French monarchy tumbling down the slope towards the Revolution. Cardinal Louis de Rohan, scion of one of the most ancient and distinguished families in France, stood accused of forging Marie Antoinette's signature to fraudulently obtain the most expensive piece of jewellery in Europe - a 2,400-carat necklace worth 1.6 million francs. Where were the diamonds now? Was Rohan entirely innocent? Was, for that matter, the queen? What was the role of the charismatic magus, the comte de Cagliostro, who was rumoured to be two-thousand-years old and capable of transforming metal into gold? This is a tale of political machinations and extravagance on an enormous scale; of kidnappings, prison breaks and assassination attempts; of hapless French police disguised as colliers, reams of lesbian pornography and a duel fought with poisoned pigs. It is a detective story, a courtroom drama, a tragicomic farce, and a study of credulity and self-deception in the Age of Enlightenment. ...Show more

All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin by Mikhail Zygar

$12.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

All the Kremlin's Men is a gripping narrative of an accidental king and a court out of control. Based on an unprecedented series of interviews with Vladimir Putin's inner circle, this book presents a radically different view of power and politics in Russia. The image of Putin as a strongman is dissolved . In its place is a weary figurehead buffeted--if not controlled--by the men who at once advise and deceive him.The regional governors and bureaucratic leaders are immovable objects, far more powerful in their fiefdoms than the president himself. So are the gatekeepers-those officials who guard the pathways to power-on whom Putin depends as much as they rely on him. The tenuous edifice is filled with all of the intrigue and plotting of a Medici court, as enemies of the state are invented and wars begun to justify personal gains, internal rivalries, or one faction's biased advantage.A bestseller in Russia, All the Kremlin's Men is a shocking revisionist portrait of the Putin era and a dazzling reconstruction of the machinations of courtiers running riot. ...Show more

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell

$30.00 NZD

Category: World War I | Reading Level: very good

The Trial of Adolf Hitler: The Beer Hall Putsch and the Rise of Nazi Germany by David King

$16.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

The hitherto untold story of the scandalous courtroom drama that paved the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. On the evening of November 8, 1923, the thirty-four-year-old Adolf Hitler stormed into a beer hall in Munich, fired his pistol in the air, and proclaimed a revolution. Seventee n hours later, all that remained of his bold move was a trail of destruction. Hitler was on the run from the police. His career seemed to be over. In The Trial of Adolf Hitler, the acclaimed historian David King tells the true story of the monumental criminal proceeding that followed when Hitler and nine other suspects were charged with high treason. Reporters from as far away as Argentina and Australia flocked to Munich for the sensational four-week spectacle. By its end, Hitler would transform the fiasco of the beer hall putsch into a stunning victory for the fledgling Nazi Party. It was this trial that thrust Hitler into the limelight, provided him with an unprecedented stage for his demagoguery, and set him on his improbable path to power. Based on trial transcripts, police files, and many other new sources, including some five hundred documents recently discovered from the Landsberg Prison record office, The Trial of Adolf Hitler is a gripping true story of crime and punishment - and a haunting failure of justice with catastrophic consequences. ...Show more

A Thousand Years Of Christianity In Hungary by Pal Csefalvay

$25.00 NZD

Category: Art | Reading Level: very good

Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life by Timothy W. Ryback

$14.00 NZD

Category: Books About Books | Reading Level: very good

Hitler was a passionate reader, his education and worldview formed largely by the books he read. Recently, Timothy Ryback uncovered in the Library of Congress hundreds of volumes from Hitler's forgotten private collection, complete with Hitler's marginalia-underlines, question marks, exclamation points, questions, and comments. Now Ryback traces key phrases and ideas from Hitler's personal books into his writing, speeches, conversations, thinking, and actions.Ryback shows us how Hitler urged his fellow party members to read Henry Ford's anti-Semitic tract, The International Jew, and how Hitler's own notions of Aryan superiority were shaped by a specific interpretation of the Nordic epic Peer Gynt. We come to understand the particulars of his admiration for The Merchant of Venice and Don Quixote and the German philosophers who provided the basis for his anti-Semitism. We see how Hitler's readings on religion and the occult provided a blueprint for his notion of "divine providence," and how a British biography of Frederick the Great fired the destructive fanaticism that compelled him to continue the war when all hope of victory was lost.Hitler's Private Library provides us with a remarkable view of Hitler's evolution-and unparalleled insights into his emotional and intellectual world. A landmark in the study of the Third Reich. ...Show more

Ethics and Extermination - Reflections on Nazi Genocide by Michael Burleigh

$20.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

This series of essays by one of today's most original and prolific scholars on German racial policy concern three interrelated aspects of Nazi Germany: relations with "the East," "euthanasia," and extermination. The collection includes important and wholly new contributions to the German-Soviet war and other national tragedies; to the controversial question of whether the Nazi analogy has any relevance to contemporary ethical discussions; and to the contemporary historiography, including works of fiction and literary criticism, of the Holocaust. ...Show more

The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution - Communal Response and Internal Conflicts, 1940-1944 by Jacques Adler

$20.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Series: Studies in Jewish History Ser. | Reading Level: very good

In this work Jacques Adler, a former member of the French resistance, asks: "Are people powerless when confronted with a State determined to destroy them? Why didn't more Jews survive the Holocaust? How did we survive? Did we, the survivors, do all that we could, at the time, to help morepeople survive? " In answering these questions, Adler examines the diverse Jewish organizations that existed in Paris during the German occupation from 1940 to 1944. The first part of the book analyzes the national composition of the Jewish population, its expropriation and daily life. The remainingchapters discuss the roles, activities, and policies of various Jewish organizations as they supported Jews in their search for survival, alerted the non-Jewish population to the terrible threat faced by every Jewish family, and acted as representatives of the Jewish people--a role that led toinevitable administrative cooperation with the Nazis and Vichy.Combining careful scholarship with a survivor's zeal to set the record straight, Adler gives an insider's account of resistance members, whose determination was born of the pain and anger that came from the loss of loved ones, whose political ideology sustained them even when they faced thethreat of starvation and the loneliness of clandestine existence, and whose anguish was all the more intense because they belonged to that community in Paris that was selected as fodder for the "Final Solution." Thoroughly researched and drawing upon previously unavailable materials, Adler presentsan important portrait of communal solidarity and communal conflict, of heroes and those whose courage failed. ...Show more

Great Tales from English History : #1 Cheddar Man to the Peasant's Revolt c.7150 BC - AD 1381 by Robert Lacey

$15.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

From ancient times to the present day, the story of England has been laced with drama, intrigue, courage and passion - a rich and vibrant narrative of heroes and villains, kings and rebels, artists and highwaymen, bishops and scientists. Now, in Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey captures so me of the most pivotal moments: the stories and extraordinary characters that helped shape a nation.Packed with insight, humour and fascinating detail, Robert Lacey brings the stories that made England brilliantly to life. From Ethelred the Unready to Richard the Lionheart, the Black Prince to the Venerable Bede, this is, quite simply, history as history should be told. ...Show more

Europe: A History by Norman Davies

$25.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

From the Ice Age to the Cold War and beyond, from Reykjavik to Riga, from Archimedes to Einstein, Alexander to Yeltsin, here between the covers of a single volume Norman Davies tells the story of Europe, East and West, from prehistory to the present day. The book's absorbing narrative lays down the chro nological and geographical grid on which the dramas of European history have been played out. It zooms in from the distant focus of Chapter One, which explores the first five million years of the continent's evolution, to the close focus of the last two chapters, which cover the twentieth century at roughly one page per year. In between, Norman Davies presents a huge and sweeping canvas packed with fascinating detail, analysis, and anecdote. Alongside Europe's better-known stories - human, national, and continental - he brings into focus areas often ignored or misunderstood, remembering the stateless nation as well as the nation-state. Minority communities, from heretics andlepers to Jews, Romanies, and Muslims have not been forgotten. This masterly history reveals not only the rich variety of Europe's past but also the many and rewarding prisms through which it can be viewed. Each chapter contains a selection of telephoto `capsules', illustrating narrower themes and topics that cut across the chronological flow. Davies then concludes with a wide-angle `snapshot' of the whole continent as seen from one particular vantage point. The overall effect is stunning: a kind of historical picture album, with panoramic tableaux interspersed by detailed insets and close-ups. Never before has such an ambitious history of Europe been attempted. In range and ambition, the originality of its structure and glittering style, Norman Davies's Europe represents one of the most important and illuminating history books to be published by Oxford. Time Capsules 201 fascinating articles interspersed throughout the narrative focus on incidents or topics asvarious as The Iceman of the Alps, Erotic Graffiti at Pompeii, Stradivarius, and Psychoanalysing Hitler. Each capsule can be tasted as a separate self-contained morsel; or can be read in conjunction with the narrative into which it is inserted. Snapshots 12 panoramic overviews across the changing map of Europe freeze the frames of the chronological narrative at moments of symbolic importance, such as Knossos 1628 BC, Constantinople AD 330, and Nuremberg 1945. A fully illustrated history Incorporates over 100 superbly detailed maps and diagrams, and 32 pages of black and white plates. ...Show more

From Weimar to Auschwitz - Essays in German History by Hans Mommsen; Philip O'Connor (Translator)

$35.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

In this book Hans Mommsen analyzes perhaps the most appalling political journey of the twentieth century--the road traversed by the German people as the Weimar Republic collapsed and Nazism emerged. Mommsen is one of the foremost political historians writing today, and these are some of his finest essay s. Examining the problem of how the relatively hopeful beginnings of a German democracy in 1918 and 1919 ended finally in catastrophe, the pieces here confront major questions of human history: the viability of democracy, the nature of politics, and the origins of genocide. The name "Auschwitz," writes Mommsen, "symbolizes the almost inconceivable crimes committed by the Nazi regime against the European Jews. But it also represents the destruction of politics' which occurred under Nazism; the process by which the existing system of balancing divergent societal interests, however imperfect," was replaced by a "rampage of ruthless violence, unparalleled brutality and the destruction of large areas of Europe." To locate the roots of the tragedy, Mommsen begins with the decline of the Brgertum and goes on to discuss such topics as generational conflict and "class war" in the Weimar Republic, the SPD, Heinrich Brning's still controversial role as German Chancellor, and the place of Hitler in the Nazi system. Also of great interest are the essays on German resistance to Hitler, Mommsen being a pioneer in research on this subject. The book ends with an essay on Hannah Arendt and the Eichmann trial. Throughout the work Mommsen suggests links between the crisis of the 1930s and political practices in contemporary Germany. From Weimar to Auschwitz will become a standard reference on the rise of Nazism and its implications for current developments in Europe. ...Show more

Under His Very Windows - The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy by Susan Zuccotti

$25.00 NZD

Category: Europe | Reading Level: very good

Pope Pius XII has often been criticized for his silence during the extermination of European Jewry during World War II. In his defense, some have alleged that the pope was doing a great deal to help the Jews but that his efforts were necessarily behind the scenes. This meticulously researched and balanc ed book examines exactly what the pope, his advisers, and his assistants at the Vatican Secretariat of State did to help the Jews of Italy. It finds that they did very little. The book begins by discussing prewar Vatican and Jesuit publications, in which Zuccotti uncovers a hitherto unsuspected prevalence of anti-Jewish sentiment. These publications, along with archival documents, indicate that Vatican protests against Italian anti-Jewish laws were limited to measures affecting converts and Jews in mixed marriages with Catholics, as was help with emigration; the papal nuncio's visits to foreign Jews in Italian internment camps did not differ from those to non-Jews and in no way eased their material discomfort; and interventions by diplomats of the Holy See for Jews threatened with deportation were rare, always polite, and seldom decisive. Above all, Zuccotti finds no evidence of a papal directive to church institutions to shelter Jews and much evidence to suggest that the pope remained uninvolved. The notion that Pius XII was benevolent and helpful to Jews behind the scenes proves to be a myth. ...Show more