Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Modern

A close look at failed US policies in the Middle East, offering a fresh perspective on how best to reorient goals in the region.

Ukraine expert Adrian Karatnycky provides an eyewitness account of the history of the modern Ukrainian state and of the nation through the tenures of the six presidents who have led Ukraine since the collapse of the USSR, including Volodymyr Zelensky. Karatnycky shows how—despite the influence of corrupt oligarchs, pressures from Russia, and the legacies of Soviet rule—an inclusive and united Ukrainian nation has emerged that inspires the world as it defends the principle that states and peoples have the right to their national sovereignty.

No one present at the Battle of Cape Lopez off the coast of West Africa in 1722 could have known that they were on the edge of history. This obscure yet fierce naval battle would have a monumental impact on British colonies and the future of slavery in America.

In 1949, the year of the Berlin airlift and the founding of the two post-war German states, Elisabeth Kusian (nurse, black marketeer, morphine and methamphetamine addict, and pathological liar) garroted and dismembered two people in a mini crime spree. Her actions both fascinated and terrified...

The French Constitution of 1791 has a major legacy that overturned many centuries of historical tradition but remains little known outside of France. Its powerful impact served as the inspiration for the wave of constitution-making that engulfed Europe during the nineteenth century and expanded...

Churchill and the Crown tells the story of Churchill's relationship with the various kings and queens he served during his long political career, from young journalist under Edward VII, through his dramatic fall from grace in the First World War under George V, the frustrations of appeasement during the interwar period and his relationship with Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936, culminating in his Finest Hour in the Second World War under George VI and the coda of Churchill's public service to his final monarch: Queen Elizabeth II.

In The Subversive Seventies, Michael Hardt sets out to show that popular understandings of the political movements of the seventies—often seen as fractious, violent, and largely unsuccessful—are not just inaccurate, but foreclose valuable lessons for the political struggles of today.

Leigh Gilmore provides a new account of #MeToo that reveals how storytelling by survivors propelled the call for sexual justice beyond courts and high-profile cases. At a time when the cultural conversation was fixated on appeals to legal and bureaucratic systems, narrative activism—storytelling in the service of social change—elevated survivors as authorities. Their testimony fused credibility and accountability into the #MeToo effect: uniting millions of separate accounts into an existential demand for justice and the right to be heard.

The discovery of Robert E. Lee's Special Orders No. 191 outside of Frederick, Maryland, on September 13, 1862, is one of the most hotly disputed events of the American Civil War. For more than 150 years, historians have debated if George McClellan, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac, dawdled after receiving a copy of the orders before advancing to challenge Lee's forces. Authors Gene Thorp and Alexander Rossino document in exhaustive fashion how "Little Mac" in fact moved with uncharacteristic energy to counter the Confederate threat and take advantage of Lee's divided forces.

On a snowy winter day in 1945 at age twelve, Marika Roth barely escaped her own death only to witness the execution of hundreds of Jews by the side of the Danube. Running, starved and shoeless, through the streets of Budapest, All the Pretty Shoes is the story she survived to write.

Since the dawn of civilization, humans had believed comets were evil portents. In 1705, Edmond Halley liberated humanity from these primordial superstitions, proving that Newtonian mechanics rather than the will of the gods brought comets into our celestial neighborhood. Despite this scientific advance, when Halley's Comet returned in 1910, newspapers gleefully provoked a global hysteria that unfolded with tragic consequences. Richard J. Goodrich examines the 1910 appearance of Halley's Comet and the ensuing frenzy sparked by media manipulation, bogus science, and outright deception.

On the night of August 6, 1930, Joseph Force Crater, a newly appointed judge and prominent figure in many circles of Manhattan, hailed a taxi in the heart of Broadway and vanished into thin air. Despite a decades-long international manhunt led by the New York Police Department's esteemed Missing Persons Bureau, the reason for Crater's disappearance remains a confounding mystery.

Grant at 200: Reconsidering the Life and Legacy of Ulysses S. Grant celebrates the bicentennial of the birth of a man whose towering impact on American history has often been overshadowed and, in many cases, ignored. This collection of essays by some of today's leading Grant scholars offers fresh perspectives on Grant's military career and presidency, as well as underexplored personal topics such as his faith and family life.

John Ross served the Cherokee Nation in a public capacity for nearly fifty years, thirty-eight as its constitutionally elected principal chief. Historian W. Dale Weeks describes Ross's efforts to protect the tribe's interests amid systematic attacks on indigenous culture throughout the nineteenth century. At the outset of the Civil War, Ross called for all Cherokees to remain neutral in a war they did not support—a position that became untenable when the US withdrew its forces from Indian Territory.

Robert Foley had only been in Vietnam for six months when he was promoted to captain and given command of a rifle company. In November 1966, Foley led his men on a mission to rescue another company that had been pinned down by Viet Cong forces. His leadership that day inspired his men and led to a successful operation—and the Medal of Honor. His actions in Vietnam were only a small portion of a long and varied career of service in the US Army, but Foley did not always seem marked for success.

In 1945, Ditha Bruncel was living with her parents in the small town of Lossen, in Upper Silesia. Close Jewish friends had vanished, swastikas hung from every building, and neighbors were disappearing in the middle of the night. At the same time, more than fifteen hundred British and Commonwealth airmen were being marched out of Stalag Luft VII. Twenty-three of these prisoners managed to escape from the marching column—and by chance hobbled into Lossen. One among them, Warrant Officer Gordon Slowey, was the man Ditha was destined to meet and fall in love with.

The story has so often been told: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, was shot dead on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Thirty days later, the Archduke's uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, producing the chain reaction of European powers entering the First World War. Contrasting the vast disproportionality between a single deadly act and an act of war that would leave ten million dead, Misfire contends that the real causes for the world war lie in "civilized" Europe rather than the assassination.

Jason Sommer's father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.

Dead Men Telling Tales is an original account of the lasting cultural impact made by the autobiographies of Napoleonic soldiers over the course of the 19th century. Focusing on nearly 300 military memoirs published by British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese veterans of the Peninsular War (1808-1814), Matilda Greig charts the histories of these books over the course of a hundred years, around Europe and the Atlantic.

In 1945, Tom Pocock travelled widely and saw the final collapse of the German armies; the horror of concentration camps and destroyed cities; retribution reaching war criminals; and the unpredictable strangers from the east, the Red Army. In Berlin, he climbed through the ruins of Hitler's Chancellery. In Vienna, he roistered with the Russians only to be arrested by them on a trip to Budapest. By the end of the year, he had paid his first visit to the El Dorado of that now distant world, New York, the glittering, happy, prosperous, democratic center of hopes and affections.